Plum Scrappy About Choosing Colors

By PChip | Category: Designer Tips |

Plum Scrappy - Digi-Scrap Color for 2008 Inspiration can come from anywhere and color is one of the most popular places we look. When I was challenged with coming up with a new color scheme of my own for a Vintage kit I was working on recently, I went searching for a new color scheme. Today I’m sharing with you a few goodies I found that I thought you might find helpful when working through your colorful work projects too.

Go Non-Traditional Sometimes!

Laura Arellano-Weddleton wrote an article way back in 2005 at ScrapJazzthat offers a few terrific ideas of alternative color schemes to use on your holiday pages. The information she shares is still very relevant today! Since so many folks have just developed and downloaded their holiday pictures, now might be the perfect time for you to pass these ideas along to your customers and scrappy friends too.

Laura’s not the only one to share her theories on color over at ScrapJazz. There are plenty others to choose from and you can access them easily by running a searching their website using the term “color scheme,” like I did. Check out the results of the search here.

Get the Right Look and Feel with Your Color Wheel

Scrapbooking Gems very own Genie Balfour shares with her blog readers how she goes about using the tried and true color wheel when picking colors for her layouts. I don’t believe Adam Polselli is a scrapper, but he has a “Get the Look” series that he’s willing to share with us all. It includes color schemes for Chick Simplicity, Ultra Hip, Corporate, Vintage, and my favorite, American Southwest. These may give you some good ideas too.

Do you like Blue?

The good folks at Pantone do. They are saying blue is the coolest color for 2008:

“From a color forecasting perspective, we have chosen PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris as the color of the year, as it best represents color direction in 2008 for fashion, cosmetics and home products,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic. Look for it artfully combined with deeper plums, red-browns, yellow-greens, grapes and grays.”

How About Green?

There’s a forecast at the FauxFun webblog for decorative painters too. People there are commenting about how green is the new neutral. I must admit that green is a difficult color for me to work with. But I like the idea of it being a popular color this next year as we continue to move towards more “earth-friendly” conversations in our society.

Color Trending for Scrapbookers

Hummie is asking the same question many others are. Back in September she wrote a blog article about whether or not color trends affects digital scrapbooking. It’s a good question. What do you think? I also wonder who exactly are the “they” who make these color decisions and then announce them for the various design industries to adopt as a guide for the new year? How much does it really affect a business if they don’t follow the trends?….This is one of those ”things that make you go mmmmm…..” type of thoughts.

As for me, I don’t find it necessary to follow the so-called color trends. However, I can still use a bit of assistance with my color choices sometimes. Nichole offered up a set of handy tools she likes to use in her DSD-Pro article: Get the Perfect Color Mix . And here’s a couple more you may find helpful. The Daily Color Scheme page is kind of fun for picking up palettes to tease your customers with. Maybe use these for posting out challenges in the forums where you participate.

If you are sitting there debating over colors with your clients before scrapping pages for them, you could do some brainstorming and color comparisons at Colormatch.dk as well. I like how the sliders work on their tool and how a single click can change the mix from complimentary to monochromatic or any of the other popular schemes!

Well I guess if you REALLY think we need a color trend for scrapbookers - I’ll stretch my creative rights and take a walk on the wild side to be non-traditional in a color choice. Let’s go with color number 4e3a75 as the color trend forecast for the digital scrapbooking industry. Hence forward (well - at least through 2008) we’ll refer to color number 4e3a75 as Plum Scrappy!

Feel free to quote me on that. ROFLOL

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Karen (Karooch from Scraps of Mind) January 17th, 2008 3:35 am :
I wrote a series of three articles on Scraps of Mind over the last month on choosing colors for digital scrapping. They may be of value to your readers as a follow up to this article of yours.
I’m not sure how you feel about having 3 links in a comment but you can always edit them out if it is against your blog’s policy.
How to Choose Color Schemes
Scrapbook Layout Color Schemes
Free Tools for Color Schemes”
PChip January 17th, 2008 2:27 pm :
Hey Karen, these are great! Thanks for sharing the info. I’m sure others will be able to use the info you provided too. You’re the best.
Genie Balfour January 19th, 2008 5:58 am :
Thanks for refering to my post. However I noticed the link to the color wheel was out of date. I’ve now corrected that now, so you’ll get to the English version when you click through.
Glad to hear blues and greens are back in fashion
- maybe I can get some new things soon! lol!
Nichole January 25th, 2008 10:11 pm :
LOL I don’t see any reason why you can’t pick the new digi-scrap color scheme for 2008. I’m thinking this plum crazy theme will be fun to work with.

Karen - thanks for sharing your ‘colorful’ info with us too!

I noticed there’s a challenge in our networking forums about working with this Plum Crazy palette. Wahoo! Love a good challenge. I’ll see what I can come up with.