Friday, April 4, 2014

How To Find Your Colors: Resources

Hello My Curating Stashbusting Friends!
  Today I am feeling good because I've got four tops cut out, the sun is shining and I'm wearing a new dress! Plus I'm so excited about COLOR! This time of year is so hard for me because our weather is still fluctuating, leaning heavily to the colder end of the spectrum and all I want it to do is warm up so I can break out the pretty dresses and bask in the sun!
  I'm also really excited because we're finally discussing color. How does it effect your sewing? Or more importantly how does it influence your stash? I've got several links for you today that have helped me on my color search.

There seem to be two approaches to finding your colors: intuitively or by method. I started on my color journey with This post and this post by Steph.
I realized I look much better in creams and ivories than I do in white and discovered I'm a WARM person! I started paying attention when people commented on my appearance. I discovered a warm turquoise is my "magic" color after several people made some interesting comments. If you say I'm "how healthy" and "Oh, you must be feeling good." regardless of how I'm actually feeling, (I'm a type 1 diabetic which gives everyone in the world the right to comment on me) I need to pay attention. :) This is also why my good friend from college loved the way I looked in her turquoise and gold earrings.
Taking into account the colors I love, feel happy and great in and this is my core color palette.
Rich browns, turquoise (don't know why it got so washed out in the photo)
and warm reds, burgundy are my core color palette.
In case you couldn't tell Steph favors the intuitive color approach which was a really good thing because when I tried to do some more research to broaden my color palette and see if there were any great suggestions/surprises for me I found I didn't fit into any one season which made me "soft" which I interpreted to mean I can wear whatever colors I want! ( I can't find the cool website that had all the flow charts but there's tons of stuff out there)

Some other great resources I found are linked below in no particular order.

I just found Into Mind when I was researching building a cohesive wardrobe and love this post on developing your color palette. Here she dissects the seasons and discusses how to use them.

This was a fascinating article about color value that I found in the beginning of my color search. Can Being Colorblind Make You A Better Artist or Designer?

I think everyone knows about Colette's Wardrobe Architect discussions on color.

Color Explorer was a cool website I found where you can design your own palettes!

I've used this information to cull my stash of fabrics I know I probably will never wear or can see myself using anytime soon. Bye bye beauties...  I've also paid more attention to the colors of the fabrics I'm buying to make sure they fit into my general color scheme.

How about you? Do you have a color palette? Do you want one? Do you think all this color analysis is hogwash? Do you have a "magic" color?

PS. Oh yeah, do you have any other great resources on figuring all this jazz out? If you do I'd love to check it out so leave me a link!

7 comments:

kriston lion said...

yes, everyone tells me i look well in turquoises. but i gravitate toward pinks and purples :)

EmSewCrazy said...

Interesting! I have a lot of pinks and am trying to diversify. Adding more purple is a good idea!

Heather Bee said...

My mother had that old 70's book about finding out your colors, "Color me beautiful." So I figured out that I'm a winter when I was a teenager. Means I look great in white, black, red and any jewel tone. Most of the time I buy within my color range but seem to have a problem with buying ivory.

EmSewCrazy said...

My Mom had her colors done as well but I've never seen the book. You look pretty smashing in most of what I see you in so you must not be doing too badly in the buying department!

Chuleenan said...

Good questions! I think I just gravitate toward certain colors. If you were to look at my sock drawer, sweaters (mostly solid colors), hats, or spools of thread, you see variations on the same colors: red, plum, mauve, purple, royal blue, periwinkle blue, black, grey, off-white. Sometimes I'll buy something and discover that it perfectly matches something else. I don't spend much time analyzing colors. I just like what I like. Though I am trying to add more colors, like green, to my wardrobe. As for a magic color? Hmmmm - I don't know if it's magic but I liked red.

On an unrelated note: I've nominated you for a Liebster Award, which is to recognize bloggers with fewer than 500 followers. You can check it out here (I've got questions for you) - http://csews.com/sewing-blogs/liebster-award ;)

EmSewCrazy said...

That's neat! Sounds like you have found your color palette by instinct! You've got some lovely colors too!


Thanks for the nomination. I'm working on the questions and will get them posted in awhile...

Anonymous said...

I've known for quite a long time that I look best in most of the colors in the "soft summer" palette. I do like to pull up an image or two of those colors once in a while for ideas to expand my color choices, though I certainly don't stick to only those colors to wear. The color I always get the most compliments on is a light dusty rose color. Not a glamorous color by any means, but it does make my skin look good and my eyes sparkle.
My daughter, who is 1/2 Latina, doesn't fit into any of the seasonal color analysis categories based on the Internet quizzes. We've had to go more on intuition for her and she looks terrific in orange and coral.