color palettes
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!
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
To see more color palettes click.here
Tags: brown, color, color palettes, Grey, Poppy Gall Design Studio, prints
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.
Tags: color, color inspiration, knit, Poppy Gall Design Studio, rainbow
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.
Tags: color palettes, knit, rainbow, spiral
Tags: autumn, color inspiration, color palettes
October
Autumn you turned
Each leaf
Into a letter inviting the wind
To its own celebration.
- Cora Vail Brooks
Click HERE for more color inspiration.
Tags: color inspiration, poetry, rainbow
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?
x
x
For more color inspiration click Here
Tags: aqua, color inspiration, color palettes, Green, purple
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?
Large Leaf Ball Over Water by Sally J. Smith
For more color inspiration click HERE
x
Tags: color inspiration, rainbow
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.
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.
x
x
x
Tags: color inspiration, color palettes, Irene, orange, Vermont
There’s something wonderful about being given a gift that is imaginatively and personally wrapped. The excitement of discovering what lies within a package sheathed in unusual paper with crisply folded corners, a pretty bow and card is a pleasure.
I recently received a small present lovingly wrapped in handmade paper from Nepal and tied with a simple brown cord. My friend made the card to match. I was delighted by the colors and textures of the wrapping and am saving the bits and pieces for some to-be-decided future project. Her creative wrapping enhanced my experience of opening the package, and has gone on to inspire one of my color palettes!
For more color inspiration click here.
“Like” Poppy Gall Design Facebook page.
x
Tags: color inspiration, color palettes, handmade, Pink, yellow
The neon-ific colors of these packs are NOT Arc’Teryx standard issue! (Nor anyone else’s I can assure you, as I spent a couple of days this month cruising around the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market looking at gear.) Perhaps rolls of left-over fabric and webbing were stitched together to make these celebratory versions of the Ciezio 18 summit pack for the 35th anniversary of the Japanese retailer Beams? The Japanese are known for their uninhibited love of crazy hued apparel and gear. I feel a twinge of sadness that I’m not able to buy one of these packs in the States. It would show up so nicely on snow. What do you think – is it time for a neon comeback??
Via: Adventure Journal
Tags: backpacking, color trend, neon
Purple and orange color combinations usually conjure up visions of team sport uniforms.Ugh! When looking into my garden for color inspiration I find this is far from true, and am delighted by these two shades used in the same color palette.
x
x
x
x
x
x
To see more of my color palettes click here.
“Like” Poppy Gall Design Facebook page.
x
Tags: color inspiration, color palettes, orange, purple
Tags: bicycles, color inspiration, rainbow
Summer is whizzing by. The Swiss chard in my garden is ready for picking. The colors of the stems against the glossy green leaves are intense! I love playing with them against a variety of colored backgrounds.
x
x
x
x
x
x
To see more color palettes click here
“Like” Poppy Gall Design Facebook page
x
Tags: color inspiration, color palettes, Green, vegetables
Victoria Finlay’s Color: A Natural History of the Palette is a great summer read for armchair travelers and color enthusiasts alike. It transports the reader to remote places around the globe via a rainbow of adventures as the author intrepidly searches for the origins of natural pigments and dyes.
Finlay was obsessed with color as a child and when her father took her to Chartres cathedral and told her that people were no longer able to make the blue in the stained glass she decided it was time to find out the secret of that particular blue and other secrets of color.
In Chile Finlay discovers how Carmine Red is made from the blood of cochineal beetles. In India she tracks down an old legend that claims Indian Yellow comes from the urine of cows whose diet is comprised exclusively of mangoes. She looks into the deadly Schlee’s Green, which may have been the cause of Napolean’s death. In Taliban occupied Afghanistan she visits the Sar-e-Sang mine to see for herself the prized and bluest lapis on earth – a color that when combined with oils renders the perfect hue for the Virgin Mary’s robes and heaven. From her we learn the secrets of the incomparable blood red varnish Stradivarius used to finish his violins; that mommia or “mummy” is a brown pigment made from the remains of Egyptian mummies; how saffron is harvested in Spain and why red ocher is sacred among Australian Aborigines.
Color is broken down by chapters titled – ocher, black, brown, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – and each is a vivid travelogue filled with fables, facts and anecdotes about the history and science of the colors found in the spectrum.
Finlay’s travel experiences are honestly told and are equally as interesting as her natural history observations and discoveries. I’ll never look at color the same way after reading her book.
Available at your local bookseller
Tags: color inspiration
There’s nothing like the taste of the succulent Amish peaches discovered last Saturday morning at the farmer’s market in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The handspun and dyed yarns across the way echoed the peach’s tones. And the daylilies now in bloom share their creamy shades too.
x
x
x
x
Click here for more color palette inspiration.
To become an interactive part of Poppy Gall Design Studio on facebook click here.
x
Tags: color inspiration, color palettes, peach
