Colour my world 4

Neutrals by nessa-elle featuring Moschino dresses

I've left NEUTRALS and MONOCHROMES for last. Most of us have a wardrobe full of NEUTRALS because that's what retailers and magazines tell us we need! Everyone needs a little black dress or a white shirt, right? Well no! Actually black and white are 2 of the hardest colours to wear, they don't suit many people. But because of the feelings they give us, most of us have black in our wardrobe (does wearing black make you feel slim or elegant?). NEUTRAL usually means without colour. Examples of NEUTRAL colours are WHITE, IVORY, BEIGE, TAUPE, GREY and BLACK. I also think of BROWNS, NAVY and DENIM as NEUTRALS, because they tend to be good bases that combine well with other colours.

We often tend to combine NEUTRALS with a brighter colour which looks good but we are trying to try something different. Have you ever tried combining NEUTRALS together? I have to admit I'm a new convert to this. If I wore black I always wore it with a bright colour eg. BLACK pants with a RED or PINK or AQUA top. My bottom half would disappear and the bright colour on top would stand out. Lately I've been trying combinations like BLACK with STONE or NAVY, it is a lot more subtle and somehow sophisticated looking. It also gives you the opportunity to show off the texture of clothing more or your jewellery as it stands out against the subtlety of colours.

MONOCHROMATIC colour schemes use multiple shades (VALUES) of the same HUE. For example wearing ROSE PINK, RED and BURGUNDY together. As I explained on Monday RED is the base colour, we add WHITE to it to get PINKS and BLACK to it to get BURGUNDY. They look good together because they are from the same colour family. This is also a more subtle way of combining colours but if wearing contrasting colours such as the TRIADS or COMPLEMENTARIES is a little to way out for you, this is a good way of trying some new combinations.

If you have an area of your body that you don't want to draw attention to, always wear the darkest colour on that area. With colours, dark colours recede and light colours bring forward or highlight. When we do our make-up this is why we put a darker colour in the hollows of our cheeks or in the crease of our eye, we're trying to make that area recede and create a thinner face or better structured eye. We then put highlighter on the areas we want to stand out- our brow bones, our cheek bones. This is because the light and shimmery highlighter, highlight that area, making it more noticeable. So if you feel you've got a big chest and you don't want people looking at it, wear a dark (doesn't have to be black) top. If you've got full, curvy hips and you don't want that the first thing people notice about you, wear a dark coloured skirt. BUT if you're going out with your husband and he loves your curvy hips and you want to show them off for him, wear a light coloured, sequinned skirt! You can wear light or bright colours any area you want to highlight.

Well I hope you enjoyed reading about colours as much as I enjoyed writing it. When you're out and about take a bit of time to look at how God uses colours, COMPLEMANTARIES- RED roses with GREEN leaves, PURPLE irises with their YELLOW highlights. ANALOGOUS BLUES & GREENS in the ocean. The colours of fruits like plums with their DARK PURPLE skins, their YELLOW ORANGE flesh and their GREEN leaves. Every colour created by a loving God for us to enjoy.

Keep blossoming!

xx Vanessa.

Colour my world 3

Have you started to look at your wardrobe with new eyes? I know when I did this myself in January I found it really challenging. We tend to have our ideas of what goes together and what doesn't. I forced myself to do a week (well 6 days) of COMPLEMENTARY colours and I found it hard, partially because I was not used to wearing those opposite combinations of colours and also because the items I had in the correct colours, the styles didn't always go well together (if I wear a looser top I like a fitted bottom & visa versa, I was forced to wear loose tops & bottoms!). I'll admit I bombed out on day 5, I don't really have any orange and it was too hot to wear the couple of things I do have with orange on them. But it challenged me to shift my paradigms and I like that!

Today I'm going to look at the last to ways of combining colours TRIADS and SPLIT COMPLEMENTS.

Let's start with TRIADS. If you look at the colour wheel above today you will see a triangle with TRIAD on it. Pretend this triangle can rotate around the colour wheel, it can stop on any 3 colours. TRIAD colours are equidistant from each other on the colour wheel. They create colourful and bold mixes. They are combinations of cool and warm colours but they stay with in their school system. They are-

RED, BLUE & YELLOW- primaries

PURPLE (VIOLET), GREEN & ORANGE- secondaries

RED PURPLE (RED VIOLET), BLUE GREEN & YELLOW ORANGE- tertiaries

BLUE PURPLE (BLUE VIOLET), YELLOW GREEN & RED ORANGE- tertiaries

SPLIT COMPLEMENT colour schemes seem complicated but they are really just a variation of the COMPLEMENTARY colours. In the split version you pair one colour with the two colours adjacent to its COMPLEMENTARY. Again if you can visualize the small isosceles triangle moving around the colour wheel, you'll know what I mean. Examples are-

RED, PURPLE (VIOLET) & YELLOW GREEN

BLUE PURPLE (BLUE VIOLET), BLUE GREEN & ORANGE

GREEN, YELLOW & RED PURPLE (RED VIOLET)

YELLOW ORANGE, RED ORANGE & BLUE

There are 12 SPLIT COMPLEMENT combinations in total. Academichic also did a colour project in recent months, click HERE to see some examples of the outfits they came up with.

There's only 2 subjects left to talk about colour-wise, MONOCHROMES and NEUTRALS so look out for them in the next few days.

xx Vanessa.

Colour my world 2

In yesterday's post I explained how we can mix our 3 Primary Colours to get 12 colours to work with. Today I'm going to talk about about how we can use these 12 colours effectively in our wardrobes. I will talk about neutrals another day, most of us have no problem with neutral colours. We live in them most of the time as they stay in fashion, go with everything and are generally flattering to everyone. But colours tend to scare people, which I think is sad. God made so many AMAZING colours for us to enjoy! Why not inject them into our lives, colours boost your mood and the right colours positively uplift the people around us. See my Rainbow Challenge to learn more about the Psychological Effects of colours.

We identify colours by hue, temperature and value. HUE is defined as the name of the colour, which is basically what we looked at yesterday. Examples are RED, YELLOW and GREEN.

VALUE is the lightness or darkness of a hue, which I also touched on yesterday. When talking about the TEMPERATURE of colours, we can look at the Psychological Temperature or the Relative Temperature. Psychologically, RED feels warm and BLUE feels cool, each colour gives off a psychological feeling but relatively there are warm and cool reds and there are warm and cool blues. When we look at the colour wheel above we can split it in half to get our psychologically cool colours- PURPLE, BLUE PURPLE, BLUE, BLUE GREEN, GREEN & YELLOW GREEN. Our warm colours are- YELLOW, YELLOW ORANGE, ORANGE, RED ORANGE, RED & RED VIOLET.

One of the easiest ways we can try out some new colours together is by using ANALOGOUS colour combinations. Basically ANALOGOUS colours are any colours next to each other on the colour wheel. Examples using 2 colours are-

BLUE GREEN & BLUE

RED & RED PURPLE

ORANGE & YELLOW ORANGE

You could try 3 (or more!) ANALOGOUS colours together. A few of my favourite combinations are

BLUE GREEN, GREEN & YELLOW GREEN

PURPLE, BLUE PURPLE & BLUE

What combinations can you try?

If you're feeling game, why not try COMPLEMENTARY colours? COMPLEMENTARY colours are colours opposite each other on the colour wheel. It's combining a cool with a warm colour so it's great if you've had your colours done and perhaps you prefer colours that are opposite to your colours. Here are the 6 combinations-

RED & GREEN

RED PURPLE & YELLOW GREEN

PURPLE & YELLOW

BLUE PURPLE & YELLOW ORANGE

BLUE & ORANGE

BLUE GREEN & RED ORANGE

These are very striking combinations. Because they are complete opposites, COMPLEMENTARY colours make each other seem intense. It can be difficult to wear them without looking a little child-like but you could try the pastel versions or deeper versions, eg. PINK & LIGHT GREEN

BURGUNDY & PINE

NAVY & ORANGE

AQUA & CORAL

Why not have a go!

Next post I'll be talking about TRIAD and SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY colour combinations, to give you even more ideas.

On Kasmira's blog "What I wore today", she mentioned her style mottos- The first is: “wear what you like.” The second is: “today only happens once.” She says, "why not take a risk with your outfit today? It’s only one day of the many you’ll have in life. Tomorrow, you can wear something different". That sums up why up why I love to try different colour combinations, life is full of so many beautiful things why not be one of them!

xx Vanessa.

p.s. Kasmira's outfit today is also a great example of COMPLEMENTARY colours with a neutral thrown in, check it out for inspiration.

Colour my world

Colours can be intimidating. When you understand how to wear them, you can look more attractive, healthy and interesting. The wrong colours can make you look sick, tired and bigger than you are. We often go to so much trouble to decorate our homes to get the right feeling or mood but we don't often bother with ourselves. Sometimes we fall into a rut of wearing safe colours and combinations because we just don't know what else looks good. I thought I'd give you a bit of a colour theory lesson and some ideas to add a bit of diversity to your wardrobe.

We learn when we're little there are 3 colours we start with. These are the Primary Colours- RED, BLUE & YELLOW.
We mix these to get the next lot of colours, these are the Secondary Colours.
RED + YELLOW= ORANGE
RED + BLUE= PURPLE
YELLOW + BLUE= GREEN

Then we do a bit more mixing and we get the Tertiary Colours.
RED + ORANGE= RED ORANGE
ORANGE + YELLOW= YELLOW ORANGE
YELLOW + GREEN= YELLOW GREEN
GREEN + BLUE= BLUE GREEN
BLUE + PURPLE= BLUE PURPLE
PURPLE + RED= RED PURPLE

Now you probably understand how this works but you might be thinking RED PURPLE, what colour is that? I'll give you some of the names retailers use for these colours.
RED- True Red, Crimson.
RED ORANGE- Tomato Red, Clear Red, Vermilion.
ORANGE- Pumpkin.
YELLOW ORANGE- Clear Gold, Light Orange, Ochre.
YELLOW- Golden Yellow, Lemon, Yellow Gold.
YELLOW GREEN- Lime, Apple, Sap Green.
GREEN- Forest, Emerald, True Green.
BLUE GREEN- Emerald Turquoise, Teal, Turquoise, Jade, Viridian.
BLUE- Royal, True Blue, Sky, Ultramarine.
BLUE PURPLE- Purple, Periwinkle, Indigo.
PURPLE- Violet, Amethyst.
RED VIOLET- Plum, Magenta.

We can then go on to make endless number of colours by adding varying amounts of WHITE, BLACK or BROWN to the list above. When we add WHITE to a colour we get the muted, pastel version. When we add BLACK or BROWN we get deeper, richer versions which often become more neutral because BLACK and BROWN are considered neutral colours. Here is a list of the pastel, muted versions and the shaded, toasted colours.

RED+ WHITE= Pink, Bubblegum, Rose, Pale Pink
RED + BLACK/BROWN= Burgundy, Wine
RED ORANGE + WHITE= Salmon, Blush, Rose Pink, Coral
RED ORANGE + BLACK/BROWN= Rust, Terracotta
ORANGE + WHITE = Apricot, Peach
ORANGE + BLACK/BROWN= Tobacco, Mahogany, Chocolate
YELLOW + WHITE= Cream, Buttermilk, Icy Yellow
YELLOW + BLACK/BROWN= Mustard, Camel
YELLOW GREEN + WHITE= Light Lime, Apple Green, Dirty Apple
YELLOW GREEN + BLACK/BROWN= Khaki, Olive
GREEN + WHITE= Mint, Icy Green, Pistachio, Jade
GREEN + BLACK/BROWN= Pine
BLUE GREEN + WHITE= Eau de nil, Icy Aqua, Aqua
BLUE GREEN + BLACK/BROWN= Deep Teal, Sea Green, Slate, Petrol
BLUE + WHITE= Icy Blue, Powder Blue, Sky, Wedgewood
BLUE + BLACK/BROWN= French Navy, Navy, Prussian Blue
BLUE PURPLE + WHITE= Bluebell, Hyacinth, Periwinkle, Mauve
BLUE PURPLE + BLACK/BROWN= Deep Periwinkle, Dark Plum
PURPLE + WHITE= Lavender, Icy Violet
PURPLE + BLACK/BROWN= Cardinal
RED VIOLET + WHITE= Warm Pink, Fuchsia, Soft Plum
RED VIOLET + BLACK/BROWN= Deep Plum, Aubergine


Now that you understand how we get the colours, in my next post I'll start to show you how we can wear them to look our best and possibly try them in a new way.

Keep blossoming!
Vanessa.