It's all about the colour

Week 2 of LOAD brought about a set of challenges and prompts around colour. Having recently done the Nic Howard's BPC class, "Colour! or is it Color?", this was interesting to build on what I had already learnt. 

It's been a very BRIGHT week! LOL! 

We listened to an interview with Lori Sawaya who is an expert in colour and she talked about how to create mood, enhance feelings or to give a message through your use of colour. Such a fascinating topic to think about.

February 8th

Enhance your layout using colour.

I am usually more comfortable using softer shades and muted colours but I had seen a layout in the gallery about Dubai and it gave me the idea to do one of my own. 

And I wanted to make it bright. 

Really bright. 

I'd bought this BG Marrakech paper back in 2009 specifically for this holiday so it was good to get it out and use it.  I wanted to concentrate on those wonderful shades of blue and green and this selection of papers seemed to really do that. 

February 9th

Using a colour grid (that describes you according to the colour you are connected to), select the colour that draws you first. 

I was of course, totally enchanted by the blossom pink here but when I started looking through my papers, a selection of green caught my eye so I went with that. I added some photos of our balcony and not much embellishment. The layout tells the story of how loud the country traffic (tractors and combine harvesters) is round here. There's not much to this layout but I have done the design before and I like that it uses several different patterns.

February 10th

Use nature's colours to create a scheme.

Normally, I would immediately have gone to browns and autumn colours. Without even thinking about it, this would be the way I would always go. 

But I was looking through my photos and saw these strawbs. Mmmm. They looked good and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the October Afternoon red polka dot paper and that was it. I remembered this gorgeous green paper (old Dream Street Papers, I think) which gave it such great contrast.

I used a Page Maps sketch and have since added another sprig of paper down the left hand side so that it goes to the bottom of the white. 

Not a me page at all, but I really like how different it is to my normal stuff.

February 11th

Go black and white. Photo, papers or both.

Another gulp moment for me. I often use b&w photos but not papers too often. But I had made a layout recently in basic black and white using my Conterfeit Kit and wondered about skipping this prompt. As in, "Done that already. tick."

But always one to face the challenge, I decided to give it a go after flipping through my papers and finding three or four I liked in shades of black and grey. I found a pretty photo and changed it to b&w too, even though it hardly had any colour in it anyway.

I've been enjoying making my own beaded pins as part of my clusters and thought the white pearls were ideal for this.

February 12th

Use a colour you don't normally use and mix in into your usual schemes.

I had seen so many orange layouts in the gallery, each one more lovely than the last and I decided that this could be an interesting colour for me to use. I rarely use orange at all, let alone a layout where orange was the main colour. I had bought these MM papers recently and tracked them down for this. I brought in my usual pink through the photos and the alpha.

Just some of the hundreds of photos I have of flowers I see, receive or grow (!). I adore the little wooden Studio Calico butterflies. I really think I need to get some more of the other designs they have. Gorgeous. And I broke into my Tim Holtz film strip too - far too nice to leave in the tin which is what I usually do.

February 13th

Take the colour direction from your photos.

Needing to even up the layouts I have been doing, I really wanted to do one of Cameron and when I saw these photos in my pile, I immediately thought of using reds and greys and had the perfect papers to go with that.

I don't find boy layouts easy to do, but these papers were easy to use once I got them out and moved them around a bit.

I need to get some more recent photos of Cam, he has grown SO much over the last couple of years but right here in these pictures, he is gorgeous! Such a sweetie.

February 14th

Create drama with the choice of colours, choosing them from as far apart on the colour wheel as possible.

Having done my strawberry layout earlier in the week, (and let's face it, that one is full of colour drama!), I decided that I didn't want to go extreme with this one. But blue and red are not exactly next to each other on the the wheel so it's not the most harmonious combination you can have.

I had seen a few Royal Wedding layouts in the gallery which prompted me to get going with mine. I had taken a couple of photos on the day of the TV and the flags outside and my scones - which by the way were the most delicious scones I have EVER tasted - Delia of course - and felt that I just wanted to keep it simple. I chose BG Boxer for this (going to be sad when this comes to an end as it is so versatile) due to the toned down reds and blues in the collection. 

So far, I have realised that I still love most of the products I have in my stash so my decluttering has been effective in thinning out what I have. I turn to BasicGrey over and over again, and I love almost every sheet I find in my hand - their products just really fit my style. 

However, I really need to start using up all my newer products that I have and get them onto layouts. This is such a bad habit of mine, to just keep them to look at. I have piles of new stuff and I find it so hard to just pick a sheet up and use it there and then. How crazy is that? Most people can't wait to use their new stuff but mine just sits there looking at me.

So next week, I really want to remember this. 

See you soon...