Wonderful World of Color - Challenge #1 Color Your Mood!

Hello everyone!

Are you enjoying the Wonderful World of Color event so far? Keep checking back every 2 hours for more challenges and inspiration.

I'm Jennifer from Jennifer Grace Creates. I am really excited to be here as a guest designer to set Color Challenge #1 for you!

This challenge is to Color Your Mood. I'm going to talk more about this below, but first here's the prize that you could win if you join in with this challenge:

It includes a Heidi Swapp Peach Color Shine Spritz, some Color Shine Memory Files, two pots of Tim Holtz Distress Powder, some Thickers, glitter, feathers, chipboard stickers and sequins!

Want to win? Read on...

Color Your Mood

Did you know that color can change your mood? Or that your emotions can make you drawn more to certain colors? Do you ever consciously think about this when choosing colors for your scrapbooking? I'm going to explore some of the emotions connected to different colors and challenge you to think about them when you are pulling products together for your next project...

I've used a few websites for researching color including THIS PAGE about the psychological properties of color, THIS PAGE about the meaning of color, and THIS PAGE with lots of color meanings. 

The color associations won't all apply to you and your moods, because you can also be influenced by your country, situation and upbringing - eg. if a color reminds you of the wallpaper on your room when you were young, then it will make you feel different to someone who has that color for their national flag. Also various shades of the different colours can alter mood too.

To help talk about the different moods linked to colours I'm going to show you some examples with scrapbooking paper. I chose a photo to scrapbook, this one of my daughter and her friends at her 6th birthday party - it was a 'My Little Pony' party so we'd made them all pony tails and manes with crepe paper:

Most often when I start scrapbooking I will just choose a couple of colors from the photo and use them to scrapbook with. For this photo I probably would have chosen green because of all the grass, and purple because that's the color of my daughter's dress. But there are so many other colors in the photo to choose from, so I thought about the mood I wanted to set first. Thinking about the emotions also helped me think about the story I wanted to tell, so it was a good journaling prompt too!

I tried it out on lots of different colours...

Red: love, passion, anger, strength, excitement

With this photo red makes me feel bold and loud - it reminds me of the girls shouts and screams while they ran around in the house.

Pink: femininity, tranquillity, compassion, nurturing, calm

Pink with this photo just feels super girly, and makes me remember how my daughter decided not to invite any boys because they wouldn't want to wear pony tails.

Orange: vitality, change, warmth, fun, optimistic, uplifting

Orange here feels fun and bright, it makes me think of a big happy smile on my daughters face, like the one when she first tried her tail on - I asked her if she liked it and she said 'no' - my heart sank until she added 'I LOVE it' with a big grin on her face.

Yellow: happiness, hope, inquisitive, new ideas, anxiety, self-esteem

Yellow with this photo makes me feel happy and bright, but it also makes me remember how stressed I was getting ready for the party.

Green: harmony, rest, renewal, balance, rest, growth

The color green here makes me think of the wind rustling the trees and the tails during a moment when the girls stood still... for about 30 seconds.

Blue: serenity, refreshing, peace, quiet, reliable, sadness, intelligence

This blue makes me feel refreshed and free, like I'm a kid again running around in the breeze.

Purple: luxury, spiritual, imaginative, deep, soulful, dreamy

With this photo the purple colour feels luxurious because they were all wearing their best party dresses and shoes, and it also makes me think how I made her dream come as true as possible - she got to live in pony land for a couple of hours.

Black: sophisticated, formal, power, secretive, protection, modern

Black here draws out the organisation - trying to get them all in a row and facing the same direction was no small feat. It also makes me think of sophistication, by making me imagine how different and more grown up her parties will be in a few years time.

What color would you choose?

All the colors above work with the photos in different ways, but it was down to me to choose which feeling I wanted to portray - there's no right or wrong here as it's all about how it makes you feel. You don't have to choose just one color, you can combine the emotions to suit your project.

Here's my finished layout...

Pony Tales:

You can see I chose to go with orange and pink, a combination of fun and femininity. I love how bright and uplifting it is!

I made a crepe paper 'tail' to go on my page, and cut the bottom edge of my paper photo mat into a fringe:

And I used an orange alpha for the word 'tales' (see how I played on the word tails there?!) as I wanted the word 'pony' to be the one that stood out:

This turned out very differently than it normally would have if I'd just chosen colors from my photo!

Are you up for the challenge? Choose a photo to scrap or a project to work on and then think carefully about the mood you want to set with your colors before you stick anything together. Remember to come back here and link your project up for the chance to win the prize! You have until midnight MST on the 16th of May to enter.

And remember there will be another 'Wonderful World of Color' post here in two hours!

Jennifer Grace x