Colormusing’s Palette of the Month for August is Seaspray, inspired by this beaded bracelet that blends iridescent silver, emerald green, and ultramarine blue into this amazing ombré bracelet:
Shady Business: My Ombré Bracelet Beading Chart
Tutorials
Tutorial: A Palette Changes its Stripes
As much as I love my colorful stripe-y palettes (and I do), even I am occasionally in the mood for something a little fancier. Here’s one of my favorite ways to change those stripes:
Catch the Wave: Alter a Palette for Fun!
In my last post, I introduced you to the idea of easily expanding the color range of a basic color palette by using the Mosaic filter in Photoshop. Now, starting with that expanded palette, we’ll take it to another level to create The Confetti Wave Palette! And when we’re done, I’ll show you some of my favorite ways to use this super-fun new version.
Let’s start with a new palette, with a sneak preview:
Expansion Plan: An Easy Way to Add Colors to your Palette
Here’s something I recently discovered by accident (isn’t that always the way?): Starting with one of my color palettes, which typically have a maximum of 5 colors, I can expand that palette into 8-1o colors— and it’s super-easy to do!
Let’s start with a palette that’s divided evenly into 5 colors:
Hip to be Square: Creating & Using Mosaic Backgrounds
Filed under Good News & Bad News: The good news is that Shutterstock, one of the largest stock photography companies, has accepted my work to sell on their site! Yes, I’m already selling some of my images on my own site (in the Digital Graphic Files collection), so why sell on Shutterstock too? Well, primarily because they do the work of formatting my images in a range of sizes, making it easy to find just what you need, and also because they reach a huge world-wide marketplace. Good news, indeed.
We Heart Palettes: A Love-Type Tutorial
Valentines. Hearts, flowers, pink, red, shiny, chocolate-y, sparkly, sweet— today, they’re all around us, in fact, we can’t get away from them. But here’s the thing: I really wanted to show you a quick Valentine-esque project, one that would show you an easy way to apply a color palette to the most basic typographic design— but I didn’t want to throw even more saccharine-sweetness at you. So I designed this graphic, bold thing to be merely the vehicle for adding a bunch of useful skills to your own design toolkit:
Colors of the Year: Making Pink & Blue Work for You
As I mentioned in my recent post following Pantone’s announcement of their co-Colors of the Year (COTY), Pink Quartz and Serenity, my initial reaction was, well, raised eyebrows (she understated.) And now, several days later, do I feel any differently? Hmm. No, not really. I’m skeptical. As much as I want to embrace every hue in the color world equally, I feel like I’ll have to work really hard to think of ways to use what looks to me like colors that belong in a nursery. But I’m trying to keep an open mind— let’s see how we can make these colors work!
A Musing Tutorial: Create a Photo/Palette Montage for a Facebook Cover Image
Since we’ve been working hard in November to add more downloadable photos and their related color palettes to Colormusing’s new online shop, I thought I’d take a break and show you something simple-but-stunning to do with them: A 2-layer montage to use as a Facebook cover image!
Here’s what I’m starting with for mine: The Peaches I photo and its coordinating palette, Just Peachy.
A Musing Tutorial: Using Color Palettes to Customize your Blog
Okay. I bet some (or a lot) of you are looking at my color palettes and wondering, “What am I supposed to do with these, anyway?” I understand. There’s something of a disconnect between looking at something pretty, and knowing how to apply it in a practical way.
So this tutorial will be the first of several (or a lot) that will not just make suggestions, but actually show you how to put palettes to work for you. I’m going to start off with November’s Palette of the Month (POM): Paris Reflection.
