Color Buzz

Thank You, Turkey

By Megan Leblond

Have you really ever noticed the beauty of a turkey? Their beautiful feathers have produced splendiferous fashion elements.  Check out this beautiful turkey-feather dress produced by Jenna Lynn Utter.

Turkeys are also responsible for one of fashion’s most enticing and ‘fun to wear’ accessories: the feather boa.  And turkey feathers are used to make the costume for your friend and mine, Big Bird.

A turkey can see in color, so they must be smart and sensitive!  The Cornell Ornithology Lab says the turkey showcases ‘very long, powerful legs’...and turkey was the first meal eaten by Neil Armstrong on the moon!  Who knew the turkey was so sensational?

Benjamin Franklin may have had it right when he argued for the turkey as the United States' national bird.  And you might begin to see why the President pardons one or two of the birds every Thanksgiving.  We must be making a national gesture: thanking the turkey for the very lean meat it provides us year round, and its other fantastic contributions.

Here at Color Buzz, we make it practice to recognize and celebrate the beauty of nature.  Consider the beautiful color palette of a turkey feather.

Turkey feathers range from domesticated white feathers to beautiful blacks, emerald greens and browns.  When you are decorating for holiday guests or selecting an ensemble, consider celebrating the beauty of the turkey this season.

Warm wishes of a Happy Thanksgiving from the team at Color Buzz!

Give Thanks for Colors

By Michele Coppin

Thanksgiving is almost here and I can hardly wait for the delicious food and its vibrant color!

     Shiny red cranberries            Warm and comforting pumpkin pie
              
      Berrylicious 1005 -1A                Toasted Pumpkin 2006 -1A

Delicately steamed sweet potatoes      Brilliant green beans
                
     Spring Squash 2008 - 1B            Enchanted Forest 6004 - 8C

                                 Golden crust of apple pie
                                 
                                Golden Promise 3003 - 1C

These could be my favorite dishes because of their scrumptious colors.  It’s true. . . Studies have shown that color has a strong psychological impact on appetite.

When it comes to decorating the table, I delve into my collection of precious knick knacks. I always try to find decorations that fit the event.  Many of these can serve as conversation starters at the dining room table:

• A globe book end symbolizing the pilgrim’s long journey towards the

  New World

• A foot candle holder symbolizing hard work and the Native Americans.

• A fall leaf symbolizing the changes autumn brings. 

• A basket of vegetables and nuts symbolizing harvest.

• Orange candles symbolizing warmth and togetherness.
  

                        

The colors of the orange table cloth and green napkins naturally reflect the season.  The brown dishes were chosen for their beautiful earthiness and simplicity.

                          

Happy Thanksgiving!

How to Create Harmony with Color

In a room where we spend the most time, it is important to our well-being and happiness to create a sense of balance and serenity in the space. Our surrounding environment can affect us greatly, so a poor choice of colors that is bland and boring, can make us feel depressed and chaotic. However, a harmonious color palette can be uplifting and relaxing.

Harmony can be defined as a pleasing arrangement of parts, in music, poetry, color or even food. Indeed, creating harmony with color is similar to composing harmony in music. Music is arranged in scales, represented by the notes in a particular succession that sound perfect together.

Color harmony begins in nature. Picture a sunlit landscape with a multitude of different colors. Under the luminous red and orange rays of dusk, the site is tinged by the warm glow of the setting sun, the colors harmonizing under its golden palette. This cohesion of color can be a great source of inspiration when searching for paint.

In this lovely soothing sunset, the sky, clouds and water are all are variations of orange.

              

Similar to musical harmony, colors are arranged in a succession creating a perfect order which can be found on the Color Wheel.
          
                              
These similar colors are analogous, meaning they belong to the same family and they sit next to one another on the Color Wheel. 

For example:     Yellow - yellow/orange - orange
                          Green - green /blue - blue.

What makes analogous colors harmonious is simply that they go well together. They are pleasing to the eye. Take, for example, this beautiful selection of yellows, oranges, browns and their variations by colorlovers.com:

                       

A simple alternative to the Color Wheel when trying to select paint is Valspar's online color palettes. They are easy to use and offer a variety of selections within color families that can help you find harmonious colors. 

Simply go to "choose colors" to begin. Select your color tone: Brights OR Misted OR Muted OR Neutrals OR Whites... (better not to mix these up!). Then choose 2 or 3 colors that are near each other, but not necessarily next to one another.

It is a good idea to choose lighter colors adding a slightly darker or brighter one as an accent. Go ahead, give it a try! It’s really fun and you may find your dream color combination.

(Please note that the appearance and shade of each color chip may vary depending on your computer - so be sure to verify chips in person prior to making a purchase to ensure the color corresponds)

Color of the Week - Churchill Hotel Maple 2008-8B

Last week's color of the week is Churchill Hotel Maple. With this soothing deep beige color, you can bring warm elegance to almost any room. Try balancing its warmth with Oatlands Subtle Taupe and Asiago for a chic backdrop for the rest of your room.

                                         
                                    Churchill Hotel Maple 2008-8B
                      
         Oatlands Subtle Taupe 6005-1B            Asiago 6005-1A

Holiday Home - Personalized Placemats

Here’s a quick and easy way to add charm to your table or create a beautiful gift for someone.

Holiday Placemats! They're so simple. The quick version takes about 20 minutes to paint and 20 minutes to dry. The custom-color version takes a little longer, but it's worth the wait! For the custom version, allow 20 minutes to mix and paint the first coat, and 1.5 hours for that to dry. Then, another 20 minutes to paint the stencil design, and a final 20 minutes for drying.

Here we go…

What you need:

Quick Version:                                                               

Solid color placemats in color of your choice
Small scale stencil
Stencil brush
Metallic paint for stencil

Custom Version:

Solid white placemats
Small containers of two paint colors that will blend together nicely
Small scale stencil
Stencil brush
Metallic paint for stencil

For this project, we used a gold from Valspar's metallic line, along with Valspar's Posh Red and Crimson Glow.
    
     Posh Red 1011-4                Crimson Glow 2011-5

Step 1

For the custom version:

 white    Place the white placemat on a working service. Take the two colors you chose, place them in separate containers and add equal amounts of water to them. Mix thoroughly. Take a brush and apply them to your placemat in swirling patterns. Alternate between colors so the two blend nicely. Allow to dry completely.

 For the quick version:

 Simply lay the placemat on the work surface.

Step 2

Stencil –

Place the stencil in the corner of the placemat. Lightly dip the stencil brush into your metallic paint. Wipe excess paint off the brush with a cloth. Gently apply the paint through the stencil opening, while trying to avoid paint-bleeding (less is more). You can swirl the brush into the corners of the stencil to be sure you are printing accurately.

Step 3

Enjoy!! Voila - you now have a lovely holiday placemat to adorn your table or give as a thoughtful present.

 

 

 

To Love or Not to Love: Purple

Purple is back in fashion this year, big time. There are so many purple accessories out there! I think there are three kinds of people in the world: people who love purple, people who love or hate purple according to the current trends, and people who just hate purple.

I think I belong in the second category. Purple is a color I love to hate. To be more precise, it’s a color I hate to love. Purple is a very strong color, very emotional. Due to the fact that it’s a combination of the warmest red and the coolest blue, it can really vary. It can range from the softest hues in the lavender family—closer to pink—to the more aggressive purple, with a lot of blue hues, that can be seen everywhere in fashion this season.

Purple has passion, I have to admit. It’s a teenager color. A little girl often goes from pink to purple as she grows older, and boys go from blue to purple. In that sense, it is a young color, a color reminiscent of puberty, when hormones get crazy and identities are in the making. The most fascinating side of purple, due to its challenging emotional side, is that it can be so beautiful, for everybody, even purple-haters.

We just did a room for a teenage girl who was ready to move on from the plain lavender room of her  preteen years, but still couldn’t move away from purple completely. She wanted a purple room that didn't scream purple, but was still purple. A room that was more sophisticated, more grown-up. To me, the trick with purple is brown. We chose two colors and mixed them on the wall with a technique called a wash. By doing so, we gave the purple more of an earthy, late-fall-sky feel. From close up, it looks more like a taupe brown than a purple, but the overall effect of the room is still purple, just softer, more grown-up, more sophisticated. She loves it, and her mom got rid of the purple and pink lamps in the room and replaced them with a very pretty leopard-print lamp. They will continue to bring in more details of browns throughout the room.
                     
When in doubt about purple, I think it is good to think brown. And if you are a purple-lover, go ahead, keep the blue and, oh yes, don't forget the green! Go for it, I would love to be you!

Color of the Week - Homestead Ballroom Gold

Last week's color of the week was Homestead Ballroom Gold. This beautiful, rich, toasty brown is a perfect color to warm up a room. Try it in a dining room, entryway or powder room. Gold and silver gilded frames look great against this color. Also try adding accents of persimmons and smoky blues: La Fonda Villa Fountain, Tropical Bay and Fresh Persimmons.

                            
                      Homestead Ballroom Gold 3003-7C

                      
La Fonda Villa Fountain 5002-4B           Tropical Bay 5002-3C

                             
                           Fresh Persimmons 2009-1

A Harvest of Fall Colors

This blog entry was written by Michele Coppin.

Fall is the time to harvest those last wilting flowers from your garden and turn them into beautiful decorations.

 

Dried wreaths, table center pieces and standing bouquets will add autumn charm to any interior. Simply gather the long-stemmed flowers into bunches to keep the stems straight, and hang them in a dark, cool and well-ventilated place for about a week. If you are picking only flower heads, set them on newspaper or a screen.

 

Once the flowers have dried into a stiff, beautiful bunch, the possibilities are endless. You could create arrangements which can be used as center pieces of a coffee table or fill a cornucopia for the Thanksgiving dinner table by adding a few leaves, twigs and nuts with orange and brown tones.

 

Or, you could enhance your door with a festive wreath. Its beautiful muted tones make an elegant fall decoration.

 

No matter what you choose to do with your dried flowers, this is an excellent way to utilize the seasonal colors from the outdoors within your home. 

 

Holiday Home - Festive Clay Pots

Here’s an easy project to take on in just a couple of hours: painting clay pots in festive colors for both your table top and gifts. It works for both Thanksgiving and the December Holidays!

I just made mine out of some unused clay pots from the garden shed.

                         

The best thing to do when starting a craft project is get all your supplies handy. For this project you will need:

Clay pots
Primer
Small container of your favorite festive color
Gold or silver paint
2” brush
Small, pointed brush

Here, I painted the larger pots gold to go on the Thanksgiving table. The smaller one, I painted red. This one I’ll be giving away to my niece for Christmas (shhhh, mums the word!)

First you paint on a coat of primer. I like to water down all the layers of paint when painting onto clay so the surface has a chance to breath. For all three pots, the next step is to paint them red. I always paint a sub-layer of red when I’m painting something gold. It brings out the warmth of the metallic.

                        

                      


From here, let the small, red pot dry, then take out the small, pointed brush and paint whatever design pops into your mind. Here, I painted small polka-dots along the rim. I had originally painted the whole pot with dots, but I decided it was too much.


                     


For the gold pots, take your metallic paint and gently brush it on. Direct the brush to go around each pot as though you are painting rings around it. Your brush strokes will help the pot look like polished metal. Let a little bit of the red peek through to add some holiday glow. Add a pretty flowering plant and voila – a wonderful and inexpensive Holiday gift!    

                     

                     

We Love This Old House

Just got my copy of November's This Old House ...I love it for many reasons.  One, because they talk about how an old house doesn't need insulation to be warm...can't wait to read that over a steaming bowl of soup.  And second, the Beehives and I were featured in the article entitled, “3 Small Spaces, 9 Bold Color Ideas.” 

This issue has a great spread on how to create color washes, and do a nice job demonstrating technique with many nice color examples.  In the article we contributed to, we talk about many different ideas from using bold colors in an entry (your favorite color is a great way to welcome guest) to using lively kitchen colors to wake you up each morning to adding energy to the small space of a bathroom.

Here are a few Valspar colors to consider:

Entry ideas
 
Trim: 
       
    Woodrow Wilson Putty 6006-1A

Walls:                                             Door:
                  
          Smoked Oyster 6005-1C              Orange Maple 2010-5      

Kitchen ideas

Ceiling:                                          Walls: 
                 
             Polar Star 4005-1A                 Field of Daisies 3003-1B

Bathroom ideas

Ceiling:                                          Walls:  
                   
  Fairmont Penthouse Stone 6008-1C         Jazzy 4005-8B

Trim:                                               Floor: 
                   
          Whitewash Oak 7006-23               Sandalwood 6008-2B