Client Project: Bradley's

I love Bradley's chocolate. Who doesn't love it? The store is full of beautiful goodies and smells fabulous. Joy is super talented and has some great displays. I was really happy that I could complete this frame project for the store. Thanks Joy!

{ Frames for Bradley's.}

{Close up of detail.}

{Touch of Gold.}

Project details to come next week! I'm off to DISNEY!

{Linking up to:}

Perfectly Imperfect.

Color Theory 101: How to Create Color Harmony

{Image via from Artisphere Online}

How to Create Color Harmony:

We use color harmony in everyday life without thinking about it. You use it when selecting clothes, planning a garden and putting on make-up. Any choice with color involves harmony. Color harmonies are an arrangement of color that have a pleasing visual effect, such as the color wheel. It is aesthetics at a basic level.

{Color combinations from the Inspired Bride.}

Artists and designers do it all the time. Artists choose color combinations that control eye movement in their compositions. Web designers do it to make colors work together in a web page or graphic. People in advertising know about color harmony. They use it to convince you to buy things and it works. They know that an ad created in striking color harmonies will not only catch your attention, but provoke you to read it. That’s one foot in the door, for them and you have no idea how many times you’ve fallen for it.

How to achieve harmony:

Choose a base color. Everything else is built around the relationship to the base color and where they fall on the color wheel. Hues can also be included (tints –white and shades-blacks).

The following three schemes are common methods to achieve harmony:

Monochromatic scheme: Base color plus varying shades of tints, shades and tones. For example, add ASCP Old White in different ratios to Aubusson would be a monochromatic scheme in varying tints. Below is an example by Annie Sloan.

{Pure Aubusson}

{Aubusson with different ratios of Old White. Photo from Annie Sloan.}

Contrasting scheme: Those colors across from each other on a color wheel. (Colors such as red and green.) When choosing complementary colors, fully saturated colors will offer the highest level of contrast. Choosing from tints or shades within the hue family reduces the overall contrast of the composition. A striking combination in ASCP would be Barcelona Orange and Napoelonic Blue.

{Good use of blue and orange contrast. Image via Martha Stewart.}

Analogous Scheme: Those colors located adjacent to each other on a color wheel.

ASCP Provence and Old Violet are analogous because blue and purple are next to each other on the color wheel. I have used this combination with Provence on a piece and Old Violet in the drawers. Beautiful.

{Provence exterior with Old Violet interior from The Back Porch Mercantile. For sale at Ironic.}

Let’s review….

· Primary colors, Red, Blue, and Yellow.

· Secondary colors, made by mixing Primary colors.

· Tertiary colors, made by mixing a Primary and a Secondary color.

· Complimentary colors, opposite each other which create a vibrant effect when
used together.

· Harmonizing colors, lie between Primary color, and seem to belong together.

Now it's time to go create something beautiful! Happy Painting!

Photo credits: Annie Sloan and Jolie Decor

Fall is in the Air...

Fall is coming....Enjoy!

{Lovely Green. Image via Martha Stewart.}

{Gourd Garland. Simple. Instructions here from Martha Stewart.}

{Captured Beauty.}

Next week, the color theory series will continue. I am at High Point, North Carolina again doing some more training for our upcoming classes at Ironic. Details soon!

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint: Country Grey and Olive and Old White

{Country Grey and Olive wash with Old White accents.}

It's Friday! This is one of my newest additions to the BPM at Ironic. It is one of my new favorite color combos. Country Grey and Olive and Clear Wax with a hint of Rustic Brown in places. These pieces are two vintage European-style Thomasville end tables I picked up from an estate sale. The drawers are finished with Olive on the inside.

{Details of sanding.}

{Pretty details}

{Original hardware and crackle affect.}

{Finished Pair!}

{SOLD.}

What's your favorite color? Have you used Olive? I'm going to use it again!

UPDATE: SOLD.

Back to Basics: Color Theory 101: The Color Wheel

The color wheel or color circle was was invented by Sir Isaac Newton. He split white sunlight into red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, and blue beams; then he joined the two ends of the color spectrum together to show the natural progression of colors. Newton associated each color with a note of a musical scale.

The current form of color theory was developed by Johannes Itten, a Swiss color and art theorist who was teaching at the School of Applied Arts in Weimar, Germany. This school is also known as 'Bauhaus'. Johannes Itten developed 'color chords' and modified the color wheel. Itten's color wheel is based on red, yellow, and blue colors as the primary triad and includes twelve hues.

The arrangement of colors around the color circle is often considered to be in correspondence with the wavelengths of light, as opposed to hues, in accord with the original color circle of Isaac Newton. Modern color circles include the purples, however, between red and violet.

Here are some helpful terms when using color:

Hue: Refers to the color itself. Each different hue is a different reflected wavelength of light.

Value: Refers to the lightness or darkness of the hue. Adding white to a hue produces a high-value color, often called a tint. Adding black to a hue produces a low-value color, often called a shade.

Intensity: Also called chroma or saturation, refers to the brightness of a color.A color is at full intensity when not mixed with black or white - a pure hue. You can change the intensity of a color, making it more neutral by adding gray to the color. You can also change the intensity of a color by adding its complement (this is the color found directly opposite on the traditional color wheel). When changing colors this way, the color produced is called a tone.

Shade: A color mixed with black.

Tint: A color mixed with white. It can also refer to the shift in hue when one color is added to another, for example red tints yellow towards orange. See also shade.

{Image via Ideas for Home Decorating.}

Primary Colors:(Red, yellow and blue) In traditional color theory, these are the 3 pigment colors that can not be mixed or formed by any combination of other colors. All other colors are derived from these 3 hues.

Secondary Colors: (Green,orange and purple)These are the colors formed by mixing the primary colors.

Tertiary Colors:(Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green and yellow-green) These are the colors formed by mixing a primary and a secondary color. That's why the hue is a two word name, such as blue-green, red-violet, and yellow-orange.

Next week: Creating Color Harmony. ( We will use some Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Examples!)

Friday Favorites

TGIF! It's been wonderful week here at BPM. Since Friday's are so fantastic, I thought I would wrap up each week with a few of my favorite images, projects or finds. Fun stuff! I hope everyone has a nice, relaxing long weekend.

{I think this orange dresser has inspired me for a good use of ASCP Barcelona Orange.
AND it also says GO VOLS!} Image via Emily Clark.

{Beautiful wedding at Bow Ties and Bliss, photographed by Anna Hedges.}

{And last, but not least...This gorgeous color combo of red, blue and green.
The dresser has a beautiful patina.}Image via The Inspired Room.

 Do you have a favorite project or tutorial you completed this week? Let's see it! Link up below. TGIF and Go Vols!