Stop Scrapping the Shirt!

Just look at those colors! The flowers and the bottle booties...snappy and fun!! This is a piece of the cover of a Woman's Day magazine...isn't it fun to look at? I love it! It made me want to learn to knit so I could make some of those!

Growing up, when someone asked “what is your favorite color?”, I could never commit to one answer. I still can’t because I don’t have a favorite color--I love them all exuberantly.

Colors mesmerize me. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy colorful things so much…flowers, nature, Pottery Barn catalogs, textiles, gift wrap, carpet samples, decorative paper, magazines with full page photos, a new box of Crayons or colored pencils…I am consistently drawn to the simplest things based on their colors. I keep a Bazzill Paper swatch book on my desk, just to look at. I tell you this with hopes that you won’t laugh at me: I don’t use it to match paper. I just look at it. It cheers me. It makes me feel alive and vibrant.
I can’t wait to take in the colors of Mexico! The ruins, the exotic flowers, the beach, the boat…just looking is going to be a visual feast.

This love of color made living in an apartment for the first twelve years of my adult life irritatingly bland. I hope I never have to live in a place where the walls are colorless again. Perhaps those years in a colorless dessert are the driving force behind my desire to be surrounded by my house full of bold color.

This inability to commit to a higher admiration of a single color has produced several decorating nightmares. Right now, it’s preventing me from being able to nail down a color or even a group of colors for my kitchen paint and décor. I think I’m driving my husband/painter a little nuts. I just can’t pick a color. I vacillate without warning between the sage to moss family and the warm tans.

I want it to be something that goes with Fiestaware. “Goes with” but doesn’t overpower. Did I mention that my kitchen is currently two shades darker than UT Orange. It wasn’t my color choice. It’s too much for a kitchen. It doesn’t feel fresh and clean to me.

I’ve been thinking lately about how my tastes in colors have changed in the last few years.
I clearly remember hating my father’s brown suits as a child…brown just seemed like the color of mud. I hated a certain brown house that we lived in too, but now--I love brown. My bedroom walls are chocolate brown with white trim. The linens will eventually be a pale brown with bird-egg blue accents. I found a dress a few weeks ago in the same scheme and couldn’t resist it. The family of brown has a significant showing in my Bazzill selection and it has to be replenished often.

There was a time when I would have *never* purchased vintage Tupperware in those oh-so-fashionable colors of avocado, chocolate brown, burnt orange, brick red and flaming yellow…but now I can’t get enough of the stuff.

Red and pink in the same area used to turn my stomach, but it’s growing on me thanks to some snappy KI paper.

I’m using more sage and moss, some orange, a little pink, and even some funky yellows in my scrapping these days. It’s fun to branch out. I think perhaps my MOB side has been crowding the girl who enjoys a little pink now and again. J

Be bold. Embrace some new color trends. As Shelby Dredge says…”Stop scrapping the shirt!”*

This little color-wise pep talk is brought to you by Bazzill and my new theme: “There is no such thing as an ugly color--just colors that haven’t found their destiny yet.”

* Note: In her Bazzill class, Shelby Dredge encourages scrappers to “stop scrapping the shirt“…meaning stop letting yourself be boxed in by the colors in your photos (predominantly the colors in the shirts that people are wearing) and explore other color options. The scrap police will not fine you if your cardstock colors don’t match the shirts. I think her remarks are very insightful.

Have a colorful week!!