Hi, Leslie here from last week’s “Challenging Color Palette” blog week. I had so much fun looking through all the colorful entries and seeing how each of you interpreted the combinations in your own way. I saw you all branching out and stepping outside your comfort zone and the results were some really fantastic cards and layouts!  You can see all the entries for last week’s challenge HERE.

So, now on to the winners! In my opinion you all deserve a round of applause for diving in and being brave with some of the more challenging color combos I threw your way. But, alas, we must choose… so thank you and here are the winners:

In first place we have kraftykat78 with an adorable card featuring her beautiful and much loved dog on the card! Click here to see her card.

Coming in second place is a fantastic card by leapfroglbna using some new stamps!!! I love how she found striped patterned paper to reflect the color palette, well done!

Judkajudi is our third place winner with this whimsical card that executed the color combination wonderfully! Way to go!

Now to announce this week’s Fresh Face winner! This category is for those who have yet to place in a contest (1st, 2nd or 3rd). Check out this exceptionally pretty card by Mrs. Clam! Congrats on a beautiful card and catching our eye - you are this week’s Fresh Face winner!

We had some wonderful entries in the scrapbook page category of this contest and that was fun… keep those layouts coming for your chance to win in this special category each week! This week’s scrapbook  winner is a page called “The Caterpillar” by Pocketful of Paper. I think it absolutely adorable (the little girl and the scrapbook page).

Now for the honorable mentions!

Paper Girl is our first honorable mention with this layout. “My daily walk” is a fantastic scrapbook page! I love her use of colors and different papers to create this project bursting with unexpected color combinations.

Our other honorable mention for this week is mi kasa with some beautiful cards made with scraps - gotta love that! The colors she combined here are so beautiful together!

Big Congrats to all that participated in the challenge! Winners and honorable mentions, please email us at the address in the blog sidebar with “Challenging Color Palettes” in the subject line so that we can mail you your fabulous prizes!

Want a chance to win and be featured on our blog next week? There’s still plenty of time to enter this week’s sketch challenge since we extended the deadline to the 28th — click HERE for all the details. Don’t forget about the new scrapbook category, too! Let’s see all your wonderful projects!

What a fun time I’ve had this week showing you more about color and introducing you to some Challenging Color Combos. If you haven’t been able to tell by now - I am BIG into color. Just like in home decorating, it is the easiest way to freshen up a stale look and let’s face it… sometimes we all fall into a rut. Trying a fun and non-conventional color combination can quickly get you out of said rut and back into your groove.

This week we covered a huge variety of colorful palettes! Let’s look back…

On Monday we showed how 3 Hero artists can take the same color combo and create 3 very different projects with it.

For Tuesday we dove into another fun color group and I really love the examples we were able to create from it. I especially love the very festive ornament Shari created for this time of year!

Wednesday was wicked because we got to see a fantastic and easy to do technique from Jennifer McGuire. A video and then 2 more terrific samples wisked us through the day.

Fun Friday we offered up a very unconventional color combination and showed you 2 cards and 1 scrapbook page using the colors. I think we surprised you all with how do-able this wild color palette can be!

There is still time this weekend to enter the weekly challenge. You have until Sunday, December 13th at 11:59 pm PST to submit your cards — all the details are HERE. Scroll down to the bottom of the post for info.

Also, don’t forget about Friday’s giveaway… you have until Sunday, Dec. 13th at 11:59 pm PST to enter that draw. Just go here for more information on how you can win some fabulous colorful Colorbox Chalk Queue Inkpads.

Happy weekend…

This week has certainly flown by! Today we have our final color combo that I introduced you to on Monday. I hope you all will have the opportunity to try this color challenge and see which colors suit your fancy best. I really liked this final color combo… talk about an unusual assortment of colors. I have often enjoyed grouping purples and greens together… they go together quite naturally but the color combo takes a bit of a twist with the yellow and reddish-orange colors. I love a challenge though and had a lot of fun with this color palette. I hope you will too!

Tami Hartley’s card is so funky and fresh… such a breath of fresh spring air (which is much appreciated since there is 3 feet of snow on the ground here where I live)! I really like how Tami layered our art flowers on top of the same color stamped flowers, a really nice and subtle touch. Tami went for it with her colorful card and the bold dynamic bursts of purple and orange in the stamped flowers will surely bring a big smile to the face of the lucky recipient of this card.

Tami says, “I’ll admit, this combo scared me a little at first glance. Once I began playing I realized the flowers would allow me to incorporate all five colors pretty easily. I considered using a white background in place of the sunshine yellow but decided to just go all out with color and skip the neutrals entirely. The result is cheerful and a little unconventional.”

Card by Tami Hartley
Supplies:

• Clear Design Flower Blossom Borders
• Layering Circles
• DesignBlock Line & Flower Pattern
• Clear Design Thinking of You Messages
• Sparkle Clear Holiday Messages (line of dots)
• Summer Art Flowers
• VersaColor Fresh Green Ink Cube
• Lemon, Leaf & Violet Notecards
• Other: Distress Ink (Dusty Concord, Mustard Seed), colored pencils (Prismacolor), embossing border (Cuttlebug), circle punches, purple flocking powder

Check out this great layout made by Jennifer McGuire. She took a really bright color scheme and kept it mellow by injecting lots of kraft and pale yellow onto the page. Jennifer said, “When I am in doubt with my color choices, I just use lots of kraft paper with it.  It always seems to pull things together and soften the look.”  It turned out fabulously - a real show stopper! The pearl accents and pretty flowers and heart detailing keep the layout feminine and soft.  (Oh, and by the way, this is Laura and Leslie of Hero Arts… co-workers and friends.)

Layout by Jennifer McGuire
Supplies:

• Patterned Hearts (new for 2009!)
• DesignBlock Tree
• Colorbox Misty Meadow Chalk Ink Queue
• Small Variety Alphabet
• Pearls
• Card Buttons Spring
• Collage Flowers (new for 2009!)
• Other: Patterned paper (Making Memories kraft and Scenic Route yellow), string

Finally, I just had to give this combo a try. It was a bit of a stretch for me but I am pleased that I gave it a shot. I loved mixing the deep, rich purple shades with the brighter orange and soft yellow - not colors I would normally pull together. A touch of Kraft brown keeps things from getting too wild and crazy! I really like having “generic” cards like this on hand for “greeting card last minute emergencies”… we all have them, right?

Card by Leslie Lightfoot
Supplies:

• Clear Design: Memories
• Clear Design: Asian Elements
• Design Block: Happiness Grows
• Card Buttons
• Art flowers Neutral
• Memories White Inkpad

Wasn’t that a fun trip down colorful combo lane!?

Now, to make this “Fun Friday” complete I want to do one more giveaway for the week. I use the Colorbox Chalk Queue ink pads A LOT… I love how there is always the perfect color ink amongst my collection of them. We want you to enjoy them also, so today’s giveaway is for 3 of our very popular sets shown below (Pumpkin Patch, Primary Elements, Chocolates and Blueberries). To enter this giveaway, just add a comment to this post before Saturday, December 13th at 11:59pm PST. In your comment, tell me what color best describes you and why. See, fun and easy! Good luck to everyone.

Have a great Friday…

I hope you all will have as much fun this week creating with our “challenging” color combos as we are having making samples to share with you! We have 3 fresh new ideas for you today.

Here is today’s unique color scheme that our 3 designers were given and challenged to incorporate into their projects… a pretty blends of magenta, rusty oranges and pea green.  Although at first glance this color combination looks challenging, our artists had fun with it and I think you’ll agree that the results are beautiful!

Magenta, Paprika, Brown, Pea Green, Taupe

First up: Shari Carroll is supremely talented, she never ceases to amaze me with her creativity. She made something festive to celebrate the holidays that are upon us. Check out this ultra amazing holiday ornament she made using today’s color combo! Shari layered torn pieces of pattern papers with diamond glaze to the backside of the acrylic flower.   Then she stamped the Holly Flourish on the front with White StazOn and added Stickles to bling it up a bit.  To finish the ornament she added ribbons, paper flowers and buttons.

Project by Shari Carroll
Supplies:

• Holly Flourish
• White StazOn
• Other: Acrylic Flower by Clear Scraps, Pattern papers Bo Bunny, Diamond Glaze, Stickles, Prima flowers, book text, buttons and ribbon.

Next we have a layout by me. I love using magentas, browns and oranges together… I find I buy my daughter a lot of clothing in these hues so I found it easy to work with this color combination. I like the soft and feminine design this palette helped me create.

Layout by Leslie Lightfoot
Supplies:

• Pattern Joy
• Design Block: Reverse Leaf Pattern
• Art Flowers Neutral
• Colorbox Chalk Queue - Fall
• Colorbox Chalk Queue - Rose Petals
• Kraft Notecards
• Pink Notecards
• Other: Decorative chipboard, brads, Patterned paper (Basic Grey), 3D Foam Adhesive, Tonic border punch system, heart punch.

Last but certainly not least we have guest artist, Vicki Boutin. She made this most adorable card, inspired by today’s color palette. To create a little interest on her stamped card, she mixed unusual color combos with cardstock. This is a great way to use scraps and infuse pizzazz with color! Great job Vicki!

Here is a tip from Vicki: “Add little punches of color to a subtle color scheme, like I did with the purple stamped birds.”

Card by Vicki Boutin
Supplies:

• Flower and Leaf Branch
• Bird in Cage
• Sparkle Clear: Hello Birdie
• Other: Cardstock

Also, don’t forget to check out our give-away from yesterday… you have until today (Tuesday, December 9th at 11:59pm PST) to win a great and very colorful prize. All the details here… at the very bottom of Monday’s post.

See you tomorrow for a new and equally inspiring color combo!

Back in August I hosted a week of all things color here at the Hero Arts blog. It was so much fun creating the projects and teaching you a bit about color theory and color schemes. Hero Arts received many requests for another week of color… specifically introducing you to some unexpected and somewhat CHALLENGING color palettes to expand your horizons. I turned to a favourite website of mine for funky and fresh color combos: www.kuler.adobe.com – if you haven’t visited this site, go and check it out. You will love the amazing combinations they offer on a daily basis.

Each day this week, myself along with two other designers will be challenged to use one specific color palette for our project. The rules are simply that we draw inspiration from the color swatches provided, and that we try and incorporate most or all of these colors into our project. We hope we can show you how we each interpret and used the color palette in a different way and we hope we can inspire you to give these and other unique color schemes a try.

Here is the color palette for today…don’t you just love it?

Dark teal blue, spring green, maize yellow, orange, dark burgundy

First up is a card I made using these dynamic colors. I really was inspired by this color scheme. My favourite color (green) accompanied by so many delicious colors made this a lot of fun to work with. The colors made me think of sunshine and flowers so I went with that as my “starting point” of inspiration in my card. I added a little bit of sparkle with Hero Arts self-adhesive gemstones.

Card by Leslie Lightfoot.
Supplies:

• NEW for 2009: Hello Circles
• Clear Design: Frames and Messages
• Fall Notecards with Envelopes
• Memories Artprint Brown Ink
• Colorbox Chalk Queue: Misty Meadows
• Teal Gemstones
• Other: Chipboard (Fancy Pants), Brad (Autumn Leaves), Cuttlebug embossing folder (Swiss dot).

Next, we have a wonderful owl card by Laura Griffin. She says, “Sometimes, it can be overwhelming getting started on a project when you have every color in the world available to you. That’s why I enjoy working with color schemes, either using a photo from a favorite catalog as inspiration; or in this case, a fun color combo from Leslie. These five colors remind me of what has been going on outdoors for the last two weeks. I live in Texas, and all of the trees have been shifting from green to different shades of yellow, orange & reddish-brown. I knew they would work great with a nature theme, and I chose owls because I can’t resist them these days!”

Card by Laura Griffin
Supplies:

• Bird Greetings
• Memories ArtPrint Brown Inkpad
• Fall Notecards with Envelopes
• Apple Green Notecards
• Other: EK Success hole punches, patterned paper, cardstock, ribbon.

Lastly, Robyn Werlich created this gorgeous layout! She is so talented and always has me in awe over the designs she creates. Here is what Robyn had to say about her project: “At first I thought that this color scheme would be challenging, but once I pulled the right colors and sat down to create…I had so much fun! By keeping to the right proportions of each color, I think they made a great combination that really made a layout that pops! By adding stamping and some clear embossing, you can really make any color combo work to your style!”

Layout by Robyn Werlich
Supplies:

• Line & Flower Pattern
• Big Owl
• Basic Lowercase Letters
• Bold Caps Alphabet
• PL: Bird Greetings
• Assorted Crystal Gemstones
• Clear Embossing Powder
• Versamark
• Artprint Brown Memories Inkpad
• Other: Cardstock, 3d foam adhesive

For our colorful week, this week’s challenge is to create a project using at least one Hero Arts stamp and one of the fun color combinations we share this week. Upload your card to the Hero Arts Flickr Group by Sunday, December 14th at 11:59 pm PST and tag it with the code word “colorful.” And… we have a new category: Scrapbooking!  So enter those scrapbook pages, too…Here are the prizes:

• NEW! Scrapbook Page Winner: $50 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2008 catalog
• Fresh Face (someone who has not yet won a contest!): $50 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2008 catalog
• 1st place: $50 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2008 catalog
• 2nd place: $25 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2008 catalog
• 3rd place: $10 of new Hero Arts stamps + a 2008 catalog

And here are this week’s color combinations…

Dark teal blue, spring green, maize yellow, orange, dark burgundy

Magenta, Paprika, Brown, Pea Green, Taupe

Lemon-lime, Canteloupe orange, Soft pink, Lilac, Tiffany Blue

Red-Orange, Pastel Yellow, Dark plum, Bright purple, Spearmint Green

Now…to start this week in a fantastic way, I wanted to do a fun and COLORFUL giveaway. Simply make a comment on today’s blog post - tell me what your favorite room is in your home, and what color combination it is. Simple as that! You have until Tuesday at 11:59 pm PST to post your comment. I will draw a name at random and post the winner on Wednesday. Guess what you have a chance to win?  Four packs of Hero Arts notecards, including three colorful multi-color packs and one pack of kraft notecards.  (Kraft notecards are great to use as a base for colorful combinations!)

Good luck on our Monday giveaway, as well as our weekly challenge. Like I said before, it is going to be one colorful week!