Making Color Decisions within a Limited Palette

Today's post features a card I made for the color challenge for October 3 on Splitcoast Stampers. Here I'm going to share an easy way to try out colors. Throughout my posts I will give insights on making various design choices; there are plenty of sites where one can learn (or watch) beautiful coloring and while I hope I inspire that as well, the design of a card is also important.

The challenge was to use only three colors - Early Espresso, Peekaboo Peach, Lemon Lime Twist - plus neutrals.  (I did cheat - I couldn't resist adding that pop of red!)  This was a unique and truly challenging combination for me.  Often my go to for difficult color combos is a floral, however, I've been meaning to color this little moose for quite some time and decided to give him a go with this palette.  I started by choosing my Copics using the corresponding paper colors for the challenge and my Copic color guide.

So what are the color decisions with a limited palette?  After all, it's right there for you so it should be easy.  But these decisions can be even more difficult because you CAN'T use another color and things can go very flat looking very fast.

To help decide, I will stamp another image to just lay out color.  Since this is actually three stamps that have been masked off, I used my MISTI to make three images from the start.  Two to color (I always color a second in the event I mess up big time) and one to quickly lay out the color I want to use.  You can see here that I just use one shade for each color and do it very quickly.  This lets me know if I like the colors where I placed them.  The mustard color on the striped pillow is what happened when I decided I did not like it striped in peach and used the green over it.

Since I did not like the front pillow mostly peach, I stamped the pillow set again and re-colored it - seen in the middle photo.  Then I cut it out (no need to be super exact) and laid it over the image.  I liked that combo much better.

Remember the second image I say I always color?  I could tell that I did not like the peach cup either, so in that one the cup is green!  It looks nice, but I decided to cheat a little on this color challenge and use red for final cup.

Stamps: My Favorite Things Merry Christmoose
Dies: My Favorite Things Single Stitched Frames and Blueprints 29; Cottage Cutz Cross-Stitched Squares
Copics: Moose - E21, E23, E25, E27; Peach - YR000,YR61, YR67; Green - YG00, YG21, YG23, YG25; Espresso - E41, E42, E44, E47, E49; Sweater - E40, E41, E81 Cup - R21, R24, R27

Thanks for visiting today!  Please let me know in the comments what you think of today's tip and what other topics you'd like to see me discuss.

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest - and don't forget to sign up for email notifications of new blog posts!


,