An Autumn Color Palette Blog Walk! Inspired by Joy...

Guess what time it is, People? It's time for another Color Palette Blog Walk! It's hosted by the inspirational Brandi at Brandigirl Blog. Woot woot! This time the inspiration is "What Brings You Joy?"


The first two color palettes were ones that I created from photos I took on my recent trip to California. (So obvious, I shouldn't have to tell you.) These are definitely coastal Northern California colors. Subdued, warm, earthy. The place where my joy is close to the surface.

This last one is a reminder to get ready for winter! (If you're a squirrel.) Autumn has become my favorite season the east coast. It definitely gives me joy to walk outside and feel the crisp air and see the amazing autumnal colors burst forth from the trees. Collecting acorns has become a new pastime inspired by my love of nature walks and this lovely season. I like how the texture for the color swatches turned out! They remind me of the striping on the acorns.

Check out what the other bloggers have created, too... they are a whole lot of creative talent all on one blog tour! I hope you liked my color palettes, and I hope you take a look at what's happening on the rest of the walk... take a hop, skip and a jump over to...

• Francesca at Francesca Watson Designs -- http://www.francescawatson.com
• Lori at Pretty Things -- http://www.PrettyThingsBlog.com
• Marsha at Marsha Neal Studio Blog -- http://www.marshanealstudio.blogspot.com
• Cindy at Sweet Bead Studio -- http://www.sweetbeadstudio.com
• Kerry at Kab's Concepts -- http://www.kabsconcepts.blogspot.com
• Cynthia at Ornamental Style -- http://www.ornamentalstyle.com/blog
• Linda at Linda's Bead Blog & Meanderings -- http://lindalandig.wordpress.com
• Emily at Good Things* -- http://jorpins.blogspot.com
• Erin at Treasures Found -- http://treasures-found.blogspot.com
• Brandi at Brandi Girl Blog -- http://www.brandigirlblog.com
• Jenni at Jenni's Beads -- http://jennibead.blogspot.com 

Color Palette Blog Walk!

Guess what time it is? It's time for another Color Palette Blog Walk! I'm super excited to be part of it this year.... I do love making color palettes, and I have a wintry one for you this time around! Last dip in the snow before spring! I also have a foretelling of spring, and a jump back to last summer...

Wintry mix

I think Spring is coming!

Coastal neutrals with a bit of jelly

 I think it's kind of interesting that I went so neutral on all my color schemes... I typically go really girly in my color preferences. I think that this winter has tainted me! Well, when spring actually comes around, we'll see if my preferences revert again to the deeper, brighter color ranges. Until then, I hope you enjoy these photos and palettes that I came up with! Please check out the color palettes of my fellow blog walkers today....

Friday, February 28th

Brandi at Brandi Girl Blog

Erin at Treasures Found

Jen at Jen Judd Rocks   

There will be new color palettes through Friday from other bloggers! Get your daily dose of inspiring color palettes! Thank you so much for visiting!! 

Here is the rest of the schedule of Color Palette Blogs for this week's walk:

Tuesday, March 1st

Karen at Creative Thoughts

Julia at UlvDesign

Jessa at The ReArtingDotNet Blog

Lyn at Lyn Foley Jewelry Blog

Wednesday, March 2nd

Jescalyn at Peach Honey Love

Paige at Paige Maxim Designs

Katrina at Ma Joie Press

Jenni at Jenni's Beads

Thursday, March 3rd

Christie at Displaced Urbanite

Rachel at TatterBeans

Brittany at The Home Ground

Cindy at Sweet Bead Studio

Friday, March 4th

Rachel at Balanced Crafts

Wren at Each Day

Kelly at Mackin Art

Kristy at Simply Shiny Blog

Vintage Inspired Palette

From The Cottage Chick

I wanted to find a vintage-inspired space that I really liked, in order to do the palette for this week's submission to Brandi Girl's blog.I love the soft pinks, as well as the use of gold, in the picture above (from Better Homes & Garden) but I didn't like gold in the palette. I think these muted tones are more representational of the vintage colors in this photo. I would love to find some large letters in the initials of my boyfriend and I. It's hard to find them for a reasonable price, though! This old mantel is amazing! I love the peeling paint.... I don't think I could fit it into my Mini, though, do you? I can barely fit the small things that I find in my search for cool vintage! I think I'm going to have to get a little trailer to hitch to the back of my Mini!

Mmmm.... Donuts....

Talk about inspirational food! These donuts were handmade by Liz Smith, a friend of a friend. I saw her post this picture on Facebook, and they made my mouth water... also, they had that effect of causing Color Inspiration, which I wanted to share with my color-inspired friends! Aren't they adorable? Beautiful AND edible! My favorite combination... I even created a color palette from this photo! This is just for Brandi Girl. :-)

Don't they make you want to go out and eat donuts? Or maybe even make your OWN donuts... you know I'm in a baking mood these days with the cooler weather coming on! If I get the nerve to try making donuts, I will definitely post a blog on it!

Ribbon Inspired Palette

I found this photo of vintage ribbons on Starpurses website. I like all the patterns and textures, but with similar types of colors unifying the group. I pulled the most serene colors out of them, as it's one of those kinds of days.... rain, a slight fall chill in the air, and all the cats are sleeping... 

Percolator!

My dad told me about a new iPhone app yesterday called Percolator. It's like having an instant color "palettizer" on your iPhone! Or maybe you have an iPad. Anyway, it's really fun and I wanted to share with you some of my creations, which look like intense color palettes.

From this:

To this:
 
 












There are several options that you can change, like the size of the "grind" from coarse, medium or fine. You can change the color of the background, how it's "served", either black or "light & sweet". You can change the "brew" using the image as the fill, or color, or rings, which is what I used above.

Fine, color, served light & sweet

Fine, rings, served black

The original image I took

 It's seriously a lot of fun to use. I've percolated everything! It's just fun to see all the colors that are pulled from the images, and shown in a simplified format. Like an intense color palette, right? I just wanted to share this with you, as it's been fun, as well as inspiring, just to see the patterns and colors that come out of some of my photographs. It's so cheap, too, for the amount of fun I've had with it! Less than $1! So if you have an iPhone, or iPad, and you love color and pattern... check it out! Also, here is another image that I really like, which I got from using the Percolator.... hope you enjoy!

the original

Color Palettes Inspired by Fashion

After posting the last color palette, I received an email from a friend of mine, with a link to this wild lingerie by a company called Strumpet & Pink. I found the photos very sultry and the under garments very inventive and feminine, and decided to do ANOTHER two color palettes, as they inspired me!

Garden of Delights

 Garden of Delights felt very exotic and has an oriental flavor, but with a vintage esthetic. 

Midsummer Maiden

 Midsummer Maiden has an ethereal, faerie-like quality, so I kept the palette to shades of pastels. I know you couldn't wear these under regular clothes, but what fun are undies that you have to wear underneath something? Impractical as these are, it makes them all the more fantastic! Plus, another of my obsessions is, you guessed it: lingerie!

Venice Bookstore Palette

Most Beautiful Bookstore in Venice

When my sister and I were in Venice this past May, we came across a bookstore that touted its claim as the "Most Beautiful Bookstore in Venice" outside its door. Intrigued by the cats that were sleeping in their outdoor basket homes outside, and the interesting entryway, we ventured in. There were gondolas filled with books, boats filled with books, gondolas suspended from the ceiling (filled with books) and piles and piles of books everywhere!! The store owner was a really nice man who liked us a lot, and it was apparent that he had a lot of cool books in three main languages: Italian, English and German... the three languages that he spoke. The whole store had a bookish musty smell to it that I love. And out back there was a really cool little courtyard for a breath of fresh air, I suppose. The entire place had this crumbling old paper color to it that I tried to capture with this palette. Here are a few more pictures of this cool place...

The entrance to the bookstore

Cat baskets with sleeping cats inside

Green courtyard out back

A bathtub filled with... books, of course!

A view down one part of the bookstore

 So, in looking at the general colors of the bookstore, what do think of my palette? Does it represent the feel of the place? If you ever go to Venice, I'd recommend stumbling across this place. (Ha ha!) There aren't really any ways to explain how to get there, though... you just sort of wander around until you see something you like. That's the only way to go. If you actually try to find specific places, it's an exercise in futility. (My sister and I tried to get to the Dorsoduro, an entire AREA of Venice that is basically "the bottom" of it, and had a VERY hard time! We never actually got to explore it, as it took ALL DAY to find it, and then it started to pour and we had no umbrellas.) But if you stumble across this place,  definitely go in and wander about. The owner is friendly and likes it when people just hang out for a bit and admire his store. It's really fun and gives you a bibliophile's view of true Venice. 

Leaf Palette

Spring leaves with explorer ant

So this photo was actually taken by my sweetheart in the spring. But I pulled a fall palette from it, rather easily.... New maple leaves strangely have some fall color to them! Can you tell I'm getting really excited about fall? In Northern California we had some fall color, and it was very exciting, those few trees that turned colors beautifully. I would go out of my way just to see those trees when I was driving somewhere. Just like how I will go out of my way to step on a crunchy leaf when I'm out for a walk! 

Brandi Girl has inspired me to make all these color palettes, which has inspired me to start being more creative again. Thank you, Brandi! This has been so much fun! And I'm not quite done yet... I have one more that I wanted to do, which is the Book Inspired palette. That will be next!

Jimmy Boo Palette

My last palette for today (I think) is done with a photo of my cat, Jimmy Boo. When we lived in Los Angeles, we lived in a lavender room, which I loved. His favorite spot was in his kitty condo, which was next to the window. His eyes are so green when he's relaxed and there's some sunlight on him. I loved seeing him in my lavender room, just because he looks softer with that color around him. Some day I will be in a lavender room again, and I'm very excited to have the color here to sample from!

Scallop Palette

Alas, sooo inspired by Brandi's challenge! I've created a palette from the seashells I collected last weekend while on the Jersey Shore. I guess this would go under "Blogger's Choice". Nature has always been my biggest inspiration, after all. And seashells are one of my greatest passions. 

I

I hope you like it. It's very much a fall palette, even though people usually associate seashells with summer. The scallops had a lot of earth tones in them, which I only really realized after getting samples of their colors! Very interesting... fall is definitely on its way!

Button Palette

For Brandi's "Inspired by Art Materials" palette submission, I chose a tray of buttons that I have for use in various art projects. I love the subtle colors of these old buttons. 

Buttons in vintage typeset tray

For some reason, buttons make me want to make things! They inspire by the form and functionality, I think. There's as interesting as beads to me, and I love that I got a huge can of buttons for $1 at a yard sale. What a steal!

Monterosso Palette

Here is my submission for the travel-inspired palette. I took this photo in Monterosso al Mare, Italy, which is one of the towns of Cinque Terra. I loved the colors of the umbrellas lined up along the beach. They were so vibrant against a backdrop of neutrals. Wish I'd actually gone down to the beach! Next time!  

Beach at Monterosso al Mare, Italy