Trouble With Matching Colors NO MORE!!

Sometimes it is hard to find just the right color combination to use on your cards. I have a color wheel that I often pull out and refer to that gives me a few options of colors that match. Usually what I do is to decide what my main color will be and then build the rest of the colors around that one. I will refer to my color wheel and find which colors compliment each other or which colors are opposite. There are several different ways that you can find colors that work well together.

I was recently directed to a website through A Shade of Blue that is AWESOME for picking and matching colors! I love it even more than my color wheel even though I haven't had much of a chance to use it yet. It is the Color Schemer website that you can visit by clicking here.

This website will allow you to choose a color and then it will give you several other colors that match. Simple. Easy. If the color that you want to match is close to the color on the screen but you need the screen color to be slightly lighter, it's no problem! Just click on the button that says "Lighten Scheme" and Wala! you now have a lighter color scheme. If you want it darker, click on the "Darken Scheme" button. You can manually change the numbers of the colors to create a different color--I'm still learning about how that works.

The other feature that I love on this website is their Color Scheme Gallery!! It features current color schemes and they have a huge gallery full of various color options. In fact, right now it features over 2,000 color schemes! That's a lot of inspiration!! And, if you happen to find a color that you really like you can do a search to see if there are other color schemes that use that same color. You can search by color number (you can find the color number by holding your mouse over the color box) or you can do a search by word. I typed in "tulip" and got a few really pretty color combinations. This is a fun program (and free)!!

Here's another one for you... Color Combos Website

This one is fun too! Lots of color schemes here too! There is a color combo box on the right-hand side of this page that lists a lot of different colors. Click on a color. I tried light blue. That took me to a page that had a lot of different color schemes using a light blue color of some sort. I found a color combo that I liked and clicked on it. This took me to another sreen and made those colors really big. At the top of the screen there is a drop-down menu that says "Other Options". One of the options is "Get Complimentary Colors". After selecting the color that I wanted the colors for, it gave me a chart of colors that matched the one that I had selected. Cool!! There was even a place that would grab the colors off of my blog and match them which is shown below.


And one more... Tulip Colors at the Color Blends website
Do you ever look for inspiration in the beauty around you? When you pull out your flower stamps, do you find yourself always reaching for the pinks and purples? Angie posted a website on A Shade of Blue that shows color combinations for various flowers. This is a website that actually sells flowers!! But, it is a great resource for colors to use with your flower stamps. Take a look at THESE tulips! Gorgeous! I never would have thought to stamp a red & white tulip. If you are stamping roses and you want to find color combinations for roses, do a search for "roses" and see what you come up with. Here is a flower arrangement that I thought was gorgeous that I found by doing a search for flowers. Very pretty color combination! Can you imagine how beautiful that would look on a card?
Well, now that you are overloaded with ideas for color combinations I will leave you to your creations! Have fun and don't let frustrations with color matching get you down again! Now you know where you can turn for help!