Colorful Insights And Inspirations

Have you been following Ten Design Days over on Living In Color With Sonu and HomeWorkshop.com?  If you haven’t been, get caught up now–it’s fantastic!!

Kate was thrilled when Sonu and Kathy asked her to join in their line up of amazingly talented peeps all talking “resolutions for the new year”.

Since Kate loves nothing more than sharing her love and knowledge of color with others, it seemed only fitting that her resolution for the new year would be to Learn More.  She has put together a fantastic list of ways that you can (as LIFC writer April might say) get your “color on”!

While we were batting around ideas to include in Kate’s top 10 tips, I realized just how important “learning more” is in my own life.  New places, new people and new ideas are really what drives me- they have no doubt, driven me to write this blog.  While curiosity may have killed the cat, being curious is what keeps this colorful kitty feeling very much alive.

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There is a Buddhist Proverb that I love, it says- “When the student is ready, the master appears.”

I take much comfort in this thought. If you say to the world (or even if you just whisper to yourself) that you want to learn more, no matter what the subject, the means and the opportunity will present themselves to you.

If  learning more about color is something that interests you in this new year, which we hope it is, then you’ve come to the right place(s).  Sonu Matthew’s Living In Color With Sonu is a stylish walk through a world of color, Kathy Barlow’s HomeWorkshop.com is a bevy of color filled design inspirations and  us…well we do what we can to spread the word that colorful knowledge is king!

Best part- once you begin to learn more about color, I guarantee the world around you will become a much more colorful place.

Suddenly you’ll begin to notice things- a dress that inspires the perfect mood for a bedroom palette, an awareness of why the colors on a box may make you pick one product over another at the grocery store, even how come that house on the end of your street always catches your eye (ahh, it’s that perfect shade of red paired against its complimentary sage green of the siding that gives the front door such visual impact!- see you’re already a color genius!!!)

For me this is when the fun of color really begins.

I loved this dress when I spotted it in a mag- the next day
I noticed a very similar palette on a line of fabrics from Calico Corner-
the inspiration for my dream modern bohemian bedroom-found!

Like Kate says in her tips, there are many simple ways you can get started to learn more about color this year. Since I’m more of a ‘do-er’ when it comes to learning, I figured I would share with you one of my favorite ways that I’ve learned more about color over the past few years.

It’s an exercise I like to call ‘color field work’.  All it requires of you is to simply open your eyes-fabulous explorer garb and binoculars are completely optional.

Designers, merchandisers, artists; examples of their talented use of color surrounds us everyday. Taking a color lesson is as easy as strolling your local mall or walking the aisles of your favorite fabric or stationary store. A trip to an art museum becomes a completely different experience when you begin to focus on how a painter washes their canvas with color. A few moments in front of a Matisse- priceless!

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Stationary stores are among my favorite of all places to
discover new combinations and to test my mad color wheel skills

A trip to the mall had Kate discovering a secret palette
on the inside of this JCrew coat-there are no boundaries
when it comes to smart design and beautiful color

Remember, this exercise isn’t just about discovering what you like. Recognizing what you don’t can be just as important. Like Kate mentioned in her tips, our reactions to color come from deep inside us. There really isn’t any set color rules of “right or wrong”, in the case of color-beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

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I love this dining room by Jonathan Adler, but the memory of a bright yellow shirt your mother
forced you to wear for your 5th grade school picture may have you running for the hills at even
the thought of ever using this hue in your own home (emotional impact perhaps? Told you it’s true.)

When we recognize our own unique tastes the answers to some puzzling questions like- why don’t I love my living room or how come I never wear that shirt that I love so much on the hanger- start to become clear.

Then we can begin to use our new found knowledge to “right” all of our “colorful wrongs”!

We realize what the perfect color to freshen up the walls could be, how changing out the rug could change the room’s mood, how adding that perfect shade of well-placed accessories would be like giving the space a breath of fresh air: why adding a colorful piece of jewelry or a unexpected shade of shoes suddenly makes that unworn shirt our newest staple-I’m telling you, colorful ideas start showing up to save the day and hopefully in the end saving you some ‘greens’, to boot.

So take the time in 2010 to Learn More. Pick a subject and expand your mind, carve out time to pursue a passion, gather tools and become more self-sufficient- surround yourself with those that can teach you and those that you can teach right back.

Make Buddha proud.

Check out this update: Kate posted a fun wrap up of Ten Design Days with ‘What I Learned From Ten Experts in Ten Days.”