Color Inspiration for Designers

This summer I’ve not done a lot of beading.  I have been working instead on building a lampwork studio, which I promise is very nearly done (and I’ll have the final pictures soon!).  I’ve taken a lot of time off to just heal physically and recharge mentally and enjoy time with my six-year old and my husband.  But now that summer is coming to a close and Zack is starting back to school next week, I’m going to have to prepare for my last shows of the season, the big ones that bring in huge Christmas-shopping crowds.

So I need some color inspiration.

In the past, I’ve used flower gardens and paint chips as color palettes, so I wanted to look for something else.

Hand-marbled paper, anyone?

PaperMojo.com has a wealth of amazing papers, and as I first started my creative efforts in card-making, paper has a special place in my heart.

How about fabrics?  This awesome fabric from RetroDepot.com gave me a lot of ideas, both for beads and for jewelry:

And then sometimes it’s just as simple as Googling “color”.  I found a really fun site called COLOURlovers.com, which is really a color community.  It’s made for people who follow color and pattern trends, and you can check out people’s creations, make and post your own, and interact and make friends with others who have a color addiction.

With just these three sites, I could get lost for hours (which could cause a bit of a problem if I actually want to MAKE anything!).  I hope you’ll find some of these helpful, and I’d love for you to share your favorite inspiration sites.

Lori Anderson creates and blogs from her studio in Easton, MD.  Her web site is www.lorianderson.net and her blog is www.prettythingsblog.com