We're creating with bright, bold color! All week long, our awesome design team is going to infiltrate your world with colorful creations you won't want to miss. It's a mix & match of your favorite Crate Paper collections and straight up saturated color. The CP blog is coming to life!
Rebecca Luminarias is the ultimate knick-knack crafter and color enthusiast! She is first in line to talk COLOR!
When given this assignment, I turned to the ultimate in bright colors: fluorescents. You can't get much brighter than that, right? In trolling the internet for a neon scheme that wasn't too cheesy, I actually found two sources for inspiration. The first was the "bright" part of the equation. When I saw this photo with the vibrant trays and the pretty floral rug, I thought it offered plenty of options. They are toned-down neon, but still lively and saturated. The second source I'll talk about a bit later...
{Photo Credit: Brit + Co}
The challenge: There aren't many neon hues in the Crate Paper collections, so I had to get creative. I first looked through my own stash of supplies to find washi tape, thread, and crepe paper which would serve as the fluorescent base for each tag. After that, I went pretty far back through the troves of Crate lines to find some bright accessories that would complement and balance the neon.
In the end, I didn't end up using most of the pieces I found! But they did add interest when it came to photographing the project. I settled on using mainly items from the
Confetti collection and paired them with stacked washi tags and a few other everyday items--the crepe paper and thread, along with some lace.
Being that I was designing with neon, I wanted to then create tags with a more modern, graphic look, rather than going with soft and sweet, which I suppose has become my norm. There are traces of sweetness--the resin birds and flower, the gold sequin leaf, and the lace bits--but overall, the feel, I think, is bolder. That's why, instead of the cute bow embellishments, I chose the
two-toned diamond elements.
I was pretty excited about all of the mini clothespins I still had in my hoarding pile (one instance where that has actually paid off!). They are from
DIY Shop and one of the older
Maggie Holmes collections and at the time, I kept them because I was mad for neon. As it turns out, all these years later, I'm still mad for neon!
Because I was (mostly) going for bold, I paired the bright neon and white tags with the deep black and gold sayings. This contrast is striking.
Seeing the photographs on my computer screen, I love the bold black and in hindsight would have probably switched out the 'pretty' phrase on the tag below with another black sticker. But this was the very first tag that I finished and at the time, I loved it. I still do, actually--the complimentary pairing of the aqua and coral is much more dynamic in real life than it looks in my photos. I have a very difficult time capturing the true essence of fluorescents with the camera.
Remember I had 2 inspiration photos? The first was bold and bright; the second is a bit softer, but what actually influenced me were the patterns and textures.
I incorporated bits of this into my tags, using the shades of bright aqua/coral and the black dot patterned papers (
Confetti's 'Life of the Party' and
'Garden Party'). And because it's difficult to capture the fluorescents, especially when I'm using a plain white background, I decided to use a linen/tweedy canvas as my backdrop. While it's still not perfect, I think it definitely helped.
Although the idea of stepping out of my soft and sweet comfort zone was a bit scary at first, I ended up embracing this challenge and maybe even finding a whole new color scheme to adore!
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