color inspiration

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Color Inspiration – Daffodils

May 2, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | No comments

Over the years I’ve planted fifty daffodil bulbs each fall in the field around my house and then waited for winter’s snows to melt to enjoy their early eruption of color. I always buy bags of assorted mixes because I like the variety of shapes and hues. This spring they’ve been snowed on repeatedly but their hardy blooms are still hanging on. Today’s color palettes are in honor of the daffodil’s tenacity and beauty.

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Tags: color, color inspiration, color palettes, Green, orange, yellow

Color Inspiration – The Color Run

March 29, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 2 comments

Attention color lovers and runners – this sounds like fun! A 5K “run” celebrating color, called The Color Run, is being held in cities all across the country this summer.

This is how it works. Participants show up wearing mandatory white tee shirts. At each kilometer there is a designated color station. When runners pass the spot, spectators and sponsors with handfuls of 100% non-toxic colored powder, merrily accost them; yellow for the first kilometer, green for the second and so on until the final color explosion at the finish line.

The point of the whole event is to make a big colorful mess! This sounds a like a whole lot more fun to me than paintball!

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Tags: color, color inspiration, The Color Run

Color Inspiration – Cheerful Windows

March 1, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 2 comments

It must be March; I’m craving a bit of color after living in a winter white landscape for the last few months. Today’s color palettes are inspired by pictures I took when I was in Iceland last spring.

Colorful houses with pretty window trim and crisp lacey curtains captivated me. Frequently cheerful vases of flowers were perched on windowsills. The houses in every town and village pop with color and help fend off the winter blues.

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Tags: color, color inspiration, color palettes, Iceland

Color Inspiration – Blue Green

February 28, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | No comments

Q: What do these microscopic scales on a butterfly wing, a vintage designer gown and a shingled house all have in common? A: Graceful overlapping “petals” in the most beautiful shades of blues and greens.

Click here for photo sources

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Tags: blue-green, color inspiration, color palettes, color story

Color Inspiration – Pink & Yellow

February 21, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 1 comment

Luminous fish and fowl inspired this color palette of pink and yellow.

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Tags: color, color inspiration, color palettes, Pink, yellow

Color of The Week – Red

February 15, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | No comments

St. Valentine’s Day, and this photo of red doors I took in Iceland, inspired today’s color palette.

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Tags: color inspiration, color palettes, red

Color Inspiration via Pinterest

February 7, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 3 comments

I’ve been obsessed with Pinterest ever since a fellow designer turned me onto it last month. It’s “virtual pinboard” where you can categorize and store images that you want to save from the web. You choose themes for your “boards” and “pin” pictures that you like onto them. You can also upload your own. When you click on your boards the images are all laid out on your screen – similar to how you view slides on a lightbox.

It’s a really great tool for me because I’m always cruising around the web looking for ideas and trends as part of my work, and Pinterest helps me keep my inspirations organized. And it’s really easy! Another cool things about it is that you can check out boards created by other people which opens whole other realms of inspirational possibilities. “It’s like falling down the rabbit hole!” says the friend who turned me onto it.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that some of my board themes include Knit & Purl, Prints and Patterns, Textures and Textiles, Vintage Skiing, Folkart, Snow and Ice and color categorized by hue. I built the color story here using images I’d “pinned” onto my “Orange” pinboard.

If you have a minute check out my boards to get an idea of how much fun I’m having with this new social media. Better yet – start building your own.

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Tags: color inspiration, color palettes, orange

Color Inspiration – Ombre Radiator

January 31, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 5 comments

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

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Tags: color, color inspiration, ombre, orange, red, yellow

Color Inspiration – Moldy Orange

January 27, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 5 comments

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.

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Tags: blue, color, color inspiration, color palettes

Pattern & Color Inspiration – Frozen Bubbles

January 18, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 1 comment

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

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Tags: blue, color inspiration, ice

2012 Color of The Year – Tangerine Tango

January 3, 2012 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 10 comments

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?

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Tags: color, color inspiration, color of the year, color trend, orange

Color Inspiration – How To Make Your Own Color Palettes

December 1, 2011 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 3 comments

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.

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Tags: color, color inspiration, color palettes

Color Inspiration – Hand Painted Yarn

November 9, 2011 in COLOR INSPIRATION | 3 comments

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.