Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Using Vintage Color Palettes

I love making my Vintage Color Palettes. One of the things that has always drawn me to old postcards and ephemera is the colors - the combos and the hues. So, once I hit on the idea of showing them off in Vintage Color Palettes it was hard to believe I hadn't thought of it before. It was a natural.

But, what do you do with them you might ask?

Well  you can use them for decor or entertaining inspiration for one. You can plan rooms or weddings by them. But, you can also use them in many ways for web design.  You could use a favorite combo for a blog or website design. You could also use them for a special poster or other illustration. You could upload them for custom phone covers or water bottles - anywhere you upload your own image on a product.

You could also use them to make background papers for your blog, website or for bookmaking or scrapbooks.

Have you heard of Colourlovers? I found this again recently and got pretty obsessed with it. Colourlovers is a place where you can make your own patterns and palettes. You can also color patterns created by other people. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to use the Vintage Color Palettes. And man, it's fun!

Example of pattern on Colourlovers
This is where the hex color codes come in. The hex codes that I provide on each Vintage Color blog post gives you the exact code for that color. Just replace the greyed colors with that code and you'll soon have something made with your favorite Vintage Color Palette!

So, here are 3 backgrounds using Vintage Color Palette combos. You can click through to Colourlovers and save these to your computer (just use alt + print screen on the large image) and use for tons of different things. They even have partnered up with Spoonflower (custom made fabric) and Imagekind (print on demand prints and prints on canvas). The truth is there is way more to the site than I have had a chance to check out yet. So, take a look see and now, onto the prints!

This simple chevron print was inspired by the Palms of Florida Vintage Color Palette:


vintage color palette chevron print on colourlovers

I wanted a kind of mid-century print for the Monarchs of New York palette.

mid century abstract vintage color palette print from colorlovers
And of course something sort of old fashioned and pretty for this early 20th Century Reward of Merit Palette:
floral wallpaper print vintage color palette from vintage ephemera

Click on any of those links in the description and you will be taken to the pattern on Colorlovers. If you use them, I'd love to see how. If you make your own - with the Vintage Color Palettes or not, I would also love to see what you've made. Feel free to follow me on Colourlovers


2 comments:

Unknown said...

I am looking for ideas to decorate my office...so excited to get white used file cabinets and painted counter tops that the previous owner cut to make a corner, l-shaped work-curface (which now needs refurbishing). I could paint my desktop any color, and an looking for some color and design inspiration. Can't wait to play around with this website!

PonyBoy Press said...

Grat! You could have fabric printed from Spoonflower from whatever print you make to coordinate with the desk or even use as the desktop!

Sharing is Caring