4th Annual Challenge of Color :: ColourLovers

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Welcome to the 4th Annual Challenge of Color!

This year I suggested that we get our palettes from the ColourLovers.com website. The people who are part of that community do a great job of making really interesting palettes and also naming the colors and their corresponding palettes very intriguingly! One of the things that hooked me on the site, was the ability to make my own palettes using the names of the colors as the guide in a community game called WordLinks. You can read more about the game and how to play on my original blog post.

I will admit that even though this is my Challenge, it can be a real challenge to me, too! My biggest nemesis is time. So on Sunday night at about 7:30 I was actually able to sit down and build a palette and create something. I had hoped to do more than this, but time just didn't seem to slow down, even though my computer made it seem like time had stood still. I have issues with this old beast in that I can move from one page or window to another, but it takes like 20 minutes to refresh. And of course, I had the ubiquitous camera issues since I dropped my camera a few months ago. So please bear with me!

I decided to give myself the twist - the Word Link palette.
 
I had a beautiful ceramic pendant from Marsha Neal Studios on my table so I knew that I wanted to start with a nice deep red, so I chose Red Red Wine. What followed next is exactly plucked from the rabbit hole of the color palette generator!

Color by COLOURlovers

Red Red Wine led to Wine Stained which brought me to Stained Green.


I had this lovely beaded component from Kristen Stevens. I love her little beaded gems! The deep garnet and soft touch of matte green would make a beautiful focal!

And I also happened to have this half strand of mossy green jasper, not sure what it is called. Perfect for the Stained Green color!

The next one was the wildcard. The greatest thing with the Word Links challenge is making a circular link where the first word of the first color matches the last word of the last color. So I knew that I needed to end on Red.

Typing in Green Gem gave me a lot to choose from with that color name. Everything from bright lime to deep forest. But my eye was drawn to the more mellow teal color. This is a surprising twist in this palette. But I like it! I chose to use a beautiful rough cut emerald stone to represent the Green Gem, since that is a true green gem. Yes, these are real emeralds! Not heat treated or highly polished, but a rich and saturated deep blue-green. I got them at Soft Flex who happens to be having a 70% off sale on their beads and gemstones.

And that led me back to Red. Gems Red!

For a little motion, I added these little rizo beads that look like funky little colored bits of rice. They have a hole at the top and are coated with an AB finish on one side, giving them a unique color and flash.I like to think not only of color, but texture when I am designing. This broke up the field of color and shape and played with the light.

I call my necklace Wine-Stained Gems in reference to the palette.

 

Here are the Word Link colors with their Hex numbers:

Red Red Wine 6E0000
Wine-Stained 351A22
Stained Green 506C05
Green Gem 0C6457
Gems Red 4 691A30

You will notice that the colors in this palette are all in a more muted shade. None of them are outside of the same saturation level as the others. I think that is why it works, but I am no color guru! Speaking of color gurus...if you haven't already checked out Brandi's blog she is the one to watch. Her posts on color theory are awesome and her book, Understanding Color,  is a great reference. She just relaunched her Color Palette Club as a reference tool that will be fantastic for designers!

And just for fun, I created this pattern using their online tools.

I really wanted to make a few more things based off a few more palettes, and I think I will, because I had a lot of fun making the palettes themselves. A good tool to remember when I find myself stuck in a drab color rut!

If you were able to carve out some time to play along with me, please feel free to add your blog to the InLinkz code below. If the holidays took over and you find yourself with more ideas than time, no worries! The number one rule is this is supposed to be FUN! If you are not having fun, you aren't doing it right! ;-)

An InLinkz Link-up