Choosing A Colour Palette With Debby

Hello, Debby here today and I thought I'd share my recent experiences of thinking more about the colour palette I use on a card. I must admit that as often as not I reach for a favourite colour and just start and then halfway through I get stuck as to what other colours to use. I find this, often when colouring a multi flower arrangement, where I start with a favourite pinky peach colour and then get a bit stumped further along. So for this card using the beautiful Friendly Florals set I purposely set out at the beginning to choose my colours carefully before I actually started. In the end, I created a colour swatch with the colours I planned to use to help me stay on plan. I suggest keeping a Pinterest board of colour combinations you find inspiring and then you've always got a wealth of possibilities when you sit down to create. Here's my Pinterest Colour board. 

So with a colour scheme in mind, I sat down to make this card. I stamped a range of images from the Friendly Florals set in Antique Linen Distress Ink on Arches Cold Pressed watercolour card and then used Daniel Smith watercolours to paint. I used dilute mixes of colours to give the muted colour scheme I was after and to ensure the colours went well together I used a few of the same colours in the mixes. So for the blue flowers, I used Ultramarine Blue mixed with Sepia, but I also used Sepia when mixing with Undersea Green for the leaves. I used Undersea Green again with Quinacridone Violet to dull down the purple mixture a little. For the large pinky peach flowers I used Quinacridone Rose with a touch of Quinacridone Gold but equally for the rich yellow flowers I used the same two paints but this time more Quinacridone Gold than Quinacridone Rose. After I finished painting, I used a Faber Castell pencil and a white gel pen to add details to the flower centres.

For the sentiment, I stamped a greeting from the No Words set in Clear Embossing Ink, sprinkled with Antique Gold embossing powder and heat set. I also stamped a coordinating sentiment from the No Words set on Slate card and white heat embossed before trimming to a banner and adding with foam adhesive below the gold embossed sentiment. I mounted the finished panel on a Desert Storm card base and accented with Pretty In Pink sequins. 

I'm certainly going to keep creating swatches, be it watercolour or any other media, before starting a card, and I'm planning on keeping the swatches too for future reference. 

Thanks for joining me today and I'll see you next time.