COLOR INSPIRATION

color palettes

Most people find old-fashioned radiators unsightly and a decorating hardship, but I have a nostalgic affection for them.

As a kid, my morning dreams were pushed aside by the reassuring clonking of pipes and the sputtering and hissing of cast iron radiators as they pushed an even warmth through our rambling old house. After a cold day of skiing I would press myself up against a radiator until my long underwear felt like it was going to burn my skin. The cats and dogs nestled up against them too.

I wish I’d thought to paint the radiator in my bedroom in a gradient of warm colors. But I would’ve reversed the colors so that the hot red was at the end of the radiator where the steam pipe entered it and became warm first and then fade the color out to yellow at the cooler far end.

Via: Pattern People 

For more color inspiration click here.

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There is something arresting and sensuous about Françoise Tellier-Loumagne’s photograph of a moldy orange. It evokes contradicting scents of sharp citrus and musty decay. It’s fascinating textural surface is both soft and velvety, glossy and firm. The shades of blue are unlike any mold that I have ever seen before. Tellier-Loumagne suggests using it as inspiration for embroidery.

For more color inspiration click here or click here to like Poppy Gall Design on facebook.

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I love the three dimensional patterns and colors of the frozen bubbles in the ice in this photo taken by Emmanuel Coupe. They would make a lovely textile pattern.

I’m on my way to The Outdoor Retailer trade show this week. I am excited to see all the latest and greatest outdoor gear and clothing that will be appearing in stores next fall, and to see sales samples of my various designs. I have a schedule filled with meetings with clients – current and potential, fabric vendors and industry friends.

I’ve been asked to be a judge for Project OR a student apparel design competition, similar to the reality show Project Runway. Students are handed a design brief the first morning of the show and then must conceive, design and sew a garment meeting the specifications of the design brief in just three days. It’s a great way to introduce young designers to the Outdoor market and vice versa. I’ll let you knoe how this goes when I return.

More photos by Emmanuel Coupe 

To “Like” Poppy Gall Design Studio on facebook  - click here 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A spirited reddish-orange called “Tangerine Tango” has been pronounced “Color of the Year” for 2012 by the Pantone Color Institute. Is it really any surprise considering the appearance of so much orange on the runway for Spring fashion?

Here’s what Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute® has to say about the choice, “sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it. Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.

Over the past several years, orange has grown in popularity and acceptance among designers and consumers alike. A provocative attention-getter, Tangerine Tango is especially appealing in men’s and women’s fashion. Fashion designers featured in the PANTONE Fashion Color Report Spring 2012, including Tommy Hilfiger, Nanette Lepore, Elie Tahari and Adrienne Vittadini, are incorporating this attractive orange into their spring collections. A fun, lively take on a traditional autumnal hue, Tangerine Tango will surely carry through to fall fashion as well.

Energize interior spaces with Tangerine Tango patterned home accessories. Pillows, bedspreads and tabletop accessories in this high-impact hue add spice to any room. Or incorporate Tangerine Tango appliances and personal electronics for an unexpected pop of color. Looking for an inexpensive way to perk up your home? Paint a wall in Tangerine Tango for a dynamic burst of energy in the kitchen, entryway or hallway.”

I for one like this bright shade quite a bit. I painted my kitchen cabinets this color a few years ago and am still living happily with it. What do you think about Tangerine Tango? Would you wear it or splash it on your walls?

For more color inspiration click here.

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People often ask me how I create the color palettes on my blog. Using Photoshop software, I scale a photo that inspires me and then place it into an Adobe Illustrator template that I created for my palettes. The template has an empty box the size of my photo and more empty boxes below for the color swatches. Using the eyedropper tool in Illustrator, I select the colors I like from the photo and fill the little boxes below it with colors.

This works well for me, but it’s not possible for those non-designers without Photoshop or Illustrator or similar software. My friend Judy introduced me to a fun and addicting alternative way of working with color palettes using your own photos called Kuler.

Anyone can sign up and access Kuler on line for free. You pinpoint the colors that you want to highlight in a photo that you have downloaded and voila! they show up in the color bar below it. You can change the colors as many time as you like and then save your palettes to your personal folder or share them. Believe me, you can spend a lot of time playing around with this app! This is what it looks like.

You can also experiment with different analogous, complementary and compound color combinations of your choice as shown below.

Color Scheme Designer is another fun site that also allows you to experiment with various color combinations. It looks like this:

Does anyone have any other interactive color sites that are fun to fool around with? Let me know what you think of these sites.

TODAY is the last day to enter Poppy Gall Design Studio Thank You & Give Away. Click here for details and good luck!

For more color inspiration click here.

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I am fascinated and inspired by the beautiful shapes and vibrant colors of the magnified agate crystals in these photos. I see so many design opportunities in them – buttons, trims, tee shirt graphics, jewelry design. What do you see?

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For more agate photos click here.

The deadline for Poppy Gall Design Studio Give Away is December 1st. Click here for details. Just entering a comment here makes you eligible. Thank you for participating!

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Another extraordinary year has flown by and I am thankful for every single minute of it. I’m spending Thanksgiving with my dear friend The Organic Vegetable Farmerette. I’m sure that her table will be laden with unusual and sumptuous heirloom vegetable dishes. These color palettes are inspired by, and in honor of, her green thumb, dirty fingernails and culinary ability. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

P.S. Don’t forget to enter the 2nd Anniversary Give Away for a chance to win something designed by Poppy Gall Design Studio!

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For more vegetable inspiration click here. For Thanksgiving inspiration click here.

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Shades of browns and greys dominate the landscape around my part of the world this time of year. In the spirit of embracing these tones (as I have no upcoming plans to escape from them) I’ve  composed some color palettes and then worked the colors back into my print designs. This is actually one way I color up prints for clients. I like mixing warm and cool shades together. As you can see the bleak hues of November can be quite sophisticated!

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To see more color palettes click.here

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I have tons of knitting yarn. More yarn than I can probably use in my lifetime. My skeins fill baskets, bins and burlap sacks. I have a dozen unfinished projects spanning decades. I don’t need any more yarn. I made a pact with myself about ten years ago; I was going to knit it all up before I started acquiring more.

I reined in my yarn enthusiasm and knit up a lot of what I had. I resisted setting foot into yarn shops. I made a nice dent in my hoard. One day, two years ago, everything changed. I entered a swanky knitting store and was overwhelmed by how much the knitting world had changed while I was ignoring it. There I found tantalizing blends of alpaca, silk and mohair in sumptuous textures and delicious colors! How could I resist knitting up a few things using these lovely yarns? My resolve was blown.

The multi-colored and subtly variegated yarns held a special allure. One can no longer only associate variegated yarns with hideous cheap acrylic. The new breeds are truly luscious. As a dyer, I was curious about how color is applied to these many-hued skeins. I asked a number of dyers at the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival about the ins and outs of “hand painting” yarns and gleaned a rough idea of how to go about it.

Last Saturday morning after looking through my color palettes for some color inspiration I dug out my dyes and dusty dye pot and five random skeins of natural colored wool and launched into my first attempt at hand painting yarn. It’s a lot more time consuming than dying solid colored yarn and makes a lot more mess. But I loved mixing the colors and applying them to the yarn. I am surprised and pleased with the results of my messy morning!

The “painted” skeins look a little scary-Grateful-Dead-tie-dye-ish in this state but once the colors merge in the dye pot and the skeins are re-wound the stripes disappear.

Once they  are-wound the tie-dyed look disappears.

Finished hand painted skeins. There are two different types of yarn, and each skein is slightly different from the other.

For more color inspiration click here. To “LIke” Poppy Gall Design Studio facebook page click here.

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I found this knit rainbow spiral on ravelry.com and might just have to knit one myself! The colors are great too! If you’re a knitter (or crocheter) join Ravelry and be prepared to get lost/inspired for hours.

from ravelry.com

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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You might also like these Autumn Color Palettes

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October

October

Autumn you turned

Each leaf

Into a letter inviting the wind

To its own celebration.

- Cora Vail Brooks

pinterest.com-pin-220370546-

Photo

Click HERE for more color inspiration.

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Believe it or not I shot these these purple and aqua berries last week. I love them with sharp greens and grey tones. I don’t think of purple and aqua as being fall colors, but after looking around I started to see similar color combinations.  I’ve been fooling around with fuzzy shots to represent color. Good? Bad?

PoppyGall-purple

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PoppyGall-Asters

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PoppyGall-bike

For more color inspiration click Here

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Crossing Maine, New Hampshire and home to Vermont on our way back from vacation Sunday was so beautiful it made my heart sing! The sky was the most perfect azure blue and the fields the most dazzling emerald green. The swamp maples and sumac are on fire, and oranges and golds are creeping up the mountains.

While our state was trashed by Irene, and some roads are still in marginal condition, it is worth getting out and admiring the spectacular color whether by foot, bicycle, car etc.

Stop someplace and have lunch or buy apples or spend the night. Every penny spent in our state will have a trickle down effect on those impacted by the storm.

And hey, if you’re slowed down by temporary road surfaces or have to “go around” because a bridge is out, it’s all part of the journey. And who knows what you might discover if you take a detour?

GreenSpirits

Large Leaf Ball Over Water by Sally J. Smith

For more color inspiration click HERE

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Monday, the day after Hurricane Irene swept through my state and Vermonters were reeling and digging out from the disastrous flooding and devastation she caused, I was safely at home. I found it hard to fathom how so many towns, villages, farms and homes had been ravaged by the storm. The inconvenience of having no power, a slightly washed out, but passable, road and a wet basement at our house was trivial compared to the major losses of my fellow Vermonters.

My husband’s beat up “job site” battery powered radio urged everyone to stay away from devastated areas until they could be assessed. Feeling helpless, I brought the radio out into the garden with me. I pulled weeds and listened all day to the non-stop updates of what was happening all across the state; homes and covered bridges, crops and cattle swept away, mountain communities isolated when roads and bridges were destroyed and power and phone lines were downed, road closings and evacuations, shelter locations, people volunteering muscle and machinery and the heroic and selfless deeds of neighboring Vermonters.

I listened, gardened, and mourned for Vermont. I clipped my annual poppy seed pods and saved the seeds. I find their shape irresistible and started fooling around with them on a sheet of orangey paper. Here are a few arrangements that I came up with.

© Poppy Gall 2011

Please Help!

Vermonters will be cleaning up and suffering from this storm for some time to come. If you’re inclined – and I hope you ARE – to help out, here are a number of ways to get involved – even if you don’t live in Vermont. THANKS so much!

Text FOODNOW to 52000 to donate $10 to Vermont Foodbank. The Foodbank will turn each donation into $60 for families in need.

You can donate to The United Way’s Vermont Disaster Relief Fund online, or buy sending a donation to your local United Way. Just make sure your donation is marked for the “Vermont Disaster Relief Fund”.

You can also donate to the American Red Cross of Vermont and the New Hampshire Valley. The Red Cross set up shelters immediately after Irene hit for flooded-out families to stay in.

The Preservation Trust of Vermont is taking donations to help rebuilding and cleanup efforts for the historic buildings and bridges damaged by Irene. Make a donation on their site and be sure to note “Hurricane Relief” in the Comments section.

© Poppy Gall 2011

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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© Poppy Gall 2011

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