Colour Theory Lesson

Hi there

I often get asked why my projects always look so fresh and the colours so vibrant....I think a lot has to do with the colour choices I make.  It is an educated choice on my part as I did art to the end of High School and continued by studying Graphic Design.

Here is colour theory in a nutshell, complete with the colours/products I used for each photo.

Your basic primary colours are red, yellow and blue.

if you mix

red + blue = purple (in theory...in reality it is not a pretty purple in my opinion, bought colours are much nicer)
yellow + blue = green
yellow = red = orange

The colours created by mixing two primaries are known as secondaries.

if you mix all three primaries...
yellow + red + blue = brown or mud!

In the colour example below I have used:

The overlapping circles and large marbled square are distress stain sprays:
Salty ocean + Mustard seed + Barn door.

The two tags are Distress paint in the same colours:
Salty ocean + Mustard seed + Barn door.

Below is the diagram I use to teach colour theory to my new students.  It is an abbreviated colour wheel and is something easily remembered cos everyone can draw a triangle, put the primaries on each point and the secondary on the straight line in between!  Because opposite each primary falls its complimentary I have drawn in arrows.  Being a triangle it makes it easy to see three sides of the colour spectrum!

Clear as Mud?  I hope not!  Just be careful not to go round the corners of the triangle and mix secondaries, cos then you WILL get mud! LOL!

Stick to the straight lines and work from light to dark when mixing colours and you will be safe.

This photo depicts each side of the colour spectrum using:

Distress ink pads for the circles:
Barn door + Seedless preserves + Salty ocean
Mustard Seed + Mowed lawn + Salty ocean
Mustard seed + Ripe Persimmon + Barn door

Distress Paints for the tags:
Barn door + Seedless preserves + Salty ocean
Mustard Seed + Mowed lawn + Salty ocean
Mustard seed + Spiced Marmalade + Barn door

Here are the Distress stain sprays used on squares of Bazzil card stock and sprayed with water

The colour combos are:

Mustard seed + Salty Ocean + Cracked Pistachio

Mustard seed + Sunset orange color wash + Barn Door

Picked raspberry + Salty ocean + Purple twilight color wash

On to the Opposite or Complimentary colours... they are opposite each other on the colour wheel.

These guys look stunning next to each other.

The minute you mix them while wet, you have the chance of making mud because the secondary colour has both primaries already in it and by adding the primary colour you are mixing all three and will therefore head towards brown!

Here are the Distress spray stains on Bazzil card stock:

Red + Green =Barn door + Lettuce color wash and Polished Jade Dylusions

Yellow + Purple = Mustard seed + Purple twilight color wash as well as wild plum color wash

Orange + blue = Salty ocean and Sunset orange color wash

My final piece of help comes in the form of the printing inks we are all used to seeing in our inkjets: Cyan, Magenta and Yellow or CMYK (key = black) in the printing industry like  used for magazines and newspapers etc.

With these three colours you don't really get mud if you overlap them even when wet, unless you get them well mixed, then a grey kind of mud happens while the inks or paints are wet.

In this case I have used:

Sprays for the 3 circles set in a triangle:

Bubblegum Pink Dylusions + Spiced Marmalade Distress stain spray + Vibrant turquoise Dylusions

The straight line of Distress ink pad circles are:

Salty ocean + Mustard seed + Picked raspberry

The tag is made with Distress paint in:

Salty ocean + Mustard seed + Picked raspberry

The Bazzil card stock square is:

Bubblegum Pink Dylusions + Spiced Marmalade Distress stain spray + Vibrant turquoise Dylusions

I hope this helped you understand colour better and why things happen the way they do when you work with your inks, sprays and paints on projects.



There is a lot more I can teach about colour and how to use it, but these are the basics for now.

PS:  if you want to make your own sample swatches with the colours you have, I punched a circle out of cardboard and used my distress inks through it overlapping each colour slightly as I went.

What's On My Workdesk Wednesday 316? ATCs

Hello fellow Desker from Julia's place over at Stamping Ground.  Thanks for visiting my desk.  Life has calmed down here for a minute, I am sure if I blink I will be back in the rat race before I know it, but for now I have nothing planned this week-end, no where to be, nothing to do...other than play at my desk!

Here are the ATC swaps I have received from Neet, Kim and Sandra de.  Claire's one which was my official swapper arrived yesterday and had been opened by customs...Thankfully they left my lovely stamp gift in it and sealed it up again!  Suspicious bunch!

The others arrived this morning with Posty at the same time as The Courier Guy with my prize of Hickory Smoke Distress ink from Hillcrest Art Supplies.  I guessed the right colour in their Facebook challenge.

It feels a bit like Christmas morning around here!

Sadly Neet messaged me to say that hers has not arrived...At least I have time to make another one this week end.  Who knows where they have gotten to.  Our post seems a little slow after their strike at the beginning of the year and they seem to have lots of time to open things...perhaps they did not like the metal cogs on my ATCs?  Who knows, but I will try something less conspicuous and see if it gets past them!

I see we party on while our leader rests and enjoys some well earned sunshine!

Faux Cracked Glass CC3 Challenge 30!

Well, I can't leave well alone...

I started this pair of goggles a back in April and have been at a stale mate with them as to how to finish them off...

Then I got busy with my canvas with the test tubes and decided some alcohol ink and some faux cracked glass would be good on them too.  So here is my entry no2 for the challenge...go figure, I don't enter this challenge for months, now I am entering twice in one challenge!  The instructions for this technique are on page 54 of Tim's Compendium of Curiosities book 3 so I can't tell you how I did that part of the goggles, but the rest I can, so here goes:

I bought some basic welding goggles.

Took them apart and sprayed them copper with standard spray paint from the hardware store.  Here you can see the sprayed bits on my desk as well as the little jar hiding behind the left top hat that is now missing its lid as it donated it to these goggles...it was the perfect fit!

I then had to hide the molded writing on the top of the goggles and did that by adding some cogs using glossy accents...

I added a left over ring from a previous pair of goggles I made from plumbing parts to the other eye of the goggles and dotted some glossy accents on it for texture.

 I also dotted some  copper dimensional pearls on the frame of the goggles for good measure and to repeat the texture.

When this had all dried, I painted over some of the areas with black distress paint to age it a bit as it was all looking too fresh and too clean.  Then I added some alcohol ink to the cogs and base of the goggles as well as creating the cracked glass effect which I carried over onto the metal frame of the eyeglass...

Above is the top and below is the bottom of the goggles.

There we have some goggles on a yet to be finished top hat!

The Funkie Junkie Boutique is back to sponsor Challenge 30, and sweet Linda Coughlin, the Funkie Junkie herself, has a fabulous $25 shopping spree for one very lucky CC3Cer!

Tim and Mario sponsor an awesome prize for the project chosen by the inspiration team, so head on over to Linda's blog Studio L3 to enter!  You still have a few days!

Just for fun I am also entering this into the challenge over at http://alteredeclectics.blogspot.com/

CC3 challenge page 54 - Faux Cracked Glass

 Anyone who knows me, might have a good understanding of my "slight" coffee addiction...

So when thinking about what I could do for this challenge of faux cracked glass... I came up with the idea of using some of the test tubes I was recently gifted by Evette to do the technique on and then have them spewing out coffee beans together with cogs...and so the canvas "Coffee in the Works" was born!  I was inspired by THIS canvas by Chi Phan called "Spread the Magic" where I first saw test tubes being used on a canvas.

 I decided to change up Tims instructions just a bit on page 54 of his Compendium of Curiosities 3 book and added some perfect pearls gold powder using water and a paint brush...

This is what they looked like after I continued following his instructions...above and below!

 Then I glued them to my canvas which I had prepared with crumpled tissue paper and distress paints to emulate the cracks on the glass.

 I added some micro beads and some Inka Gold rub as well as some alcohol inks to make everything look a little worn as well as a distress paint shadow under the pouring beans...

 I added strips of embossed sticky backed foil to the sides of my box canvas as per the instructions on page 46 called painted industrial.

 Here is the finished canvas front

 and side

 The Funkie Junkie Boutique is back to sponsor Challenge 30, and sweet Linda Coughlin, the Funkie Junkie herself, has a fabulous $25 shopping spree for one very lucky CC3Cer!

Tim and Mario are sponsors of a faberoonie package of Tim product goodness...for the project chosen by the Inspiration team....

You gotta be in it to win it so come join the fun over at Linda's blog Studio L3

Tim's June tag for 2015

I decided to use the cake dome and the Cupcake stamp for Tims June  tag.  Here are a few of the photos I took of my desk as I was creating...organised chaos!

So that my candle would fit under the dome, I cut a curved slot into the base of the dome using a craft knife and slipped the cupcake into it.  This gives it a little more head room in the dome and more dimension on the plate.

I die cut the base of the dome from a gold cardboard and then sanded it and inked it with walnut stain distress ink to give it more of a worn look.