Color Inspiration--Part 2

So what do I do when I want to make something but have 0% inspiration on where to start color wise?  I turn to nature.  Mother Nature has provided us with so many beautiful things to see, how could you not be inspired?  However, this does not mean I pack up and go outside...all though that's not a bad idea either.  I take the modern lazy approach and set on the couch and surf Pinterest.  I do not have a great camera, but it allows me to take advantage of the fact other people do and like to share their work.

I have found two great programs from Sherwin-Williams that help me in deciding which colors to pull from photographs.  The first is Chip-It which is a free program on their webpage.  It's very easy to use, you just upload the picture from your computer and it will give you color "chips." matched to the picture.  

I found this butterfly picture on Pinterest and LOVE the pop of orange with the soft purples.  When I upload it to Chip-It this is what it gave me.

I do love the colors it produced but was disappointed to see that the orange did not come through.  Unfortunately with Chip-It you do not have an option to try to grab other colors from the picture.  However, they have a phone app for iPhone and Android called ColorSnap and it will let you pick and choose.  This is what it came up with on the first try.

This time it did pick up orange but not the vibrant one.  No problem.  You can use your finger to move the bubbles to the colors that you like.  When you move one of the bubbles a little window with a white cross hair appears so that you can see exactly where you are placing it and the circle will change to the color of what the cross hairs are touching.

With the original color sample I decided to trade out the taupe and the orange and this is what it would look like

Another nice thing about the phone app is if you find a crazy fabric at the store, you could snap a picture of it, upload it and boom you have help picking out your colors.  It's also fun to print pictures and match things up yourself.  I've kind of found there is a trial and error in picking fabrics and like anything the more you do it the better you will get.  

And when all else fails be a rebel, throw out all color rules and make a scrappy quilt.

Sometimes breaking all the rules can be even prettier!