Start randomly choosing colors that attract you and after you’ve made 50 to 100 selections, there will be a pattern to your color choices. Guaranteed. I see it with every client.

Following the inspiring color choice can entice us to try a new flavor. The Nespresso company has made an artform out of color choice as it affects product packaging and display placement. (And I love the coffee!)

You can’t escape your own context whether you know it or not.  No matter how “objective” we try to be, or think we are, our perceptions of color are contingent upon who we are. We can’t escape it.

And no matter how forward-thinking or retro-minded we may be, we are still in the present moment. Which is why we need to repaint, remodel, re-brand, etc. Time is marching on and change is inevitable. Colors go in and out of fashion because pushing the changes of fashion is the flow of time and perception.

That said, can a color choice be out of context for a particular project or a particular room? Absolutely, if that project or room already has a defined color scheme. Choosing colors that integrate into an existing color plan has a different set of parameters than creating a completely new color plan.

If you want to know what you really think and feel about color, pay attention to what inspires you and look for patterns as your choices add up. Inspired, sensational color can be yours!

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Paint color sample swatches can be overwhelming. Take time to create a color plan and choosing all of your paint, textile and surface colors will be easier.

There is nothing wrong with white walls. Let’s just get that out there. Though white isn’t a “color” on the color wheel, it certainly is a paint color, and one that many people love. But if the only reason you have white walls is because you’re afraid of color, you may have a touch of chromophobia or “fear of colors”.

Or maybe you just have a fear of making expensive mistakes with paint color. That’s more often the case.

Although paint is often touted as a cheap and easy interior design fix, in reality painting your home can be a big and messy project. With paint prices between $20 – $60 per gallon, plus the cost of application, color mistakes add up fast.

And now is where I usually say, “Which is why you need a color consultant.”  But not everybody can afford or find the right color consultant.

So, what should you do if  you are determined to create your own paint color plan? Here are some color choosing tips if you’re looking to freshen a room with color:

• Take time collecting samples of colors you love. Look outside of paint store swatches to the ordinary things in your life that you enjoy. The color of your morning latte may be your best soothing warm brown color.
• Assemble your samples of the colors you love with samples of the colors in your room that you have to live with, like that ugly tile or flooring you can’t afford to replace.
• Now, using a paint store fan deck, look for a way to bridge the colors you love with the colors you are stuck with. A “bridge” color is my way to describe a color that is a version of what you love, that will work with what you have.
• Give yourself time with your color choices before you ask for anyone elses opinion.
• Life is short, live with the colors you love.  (And that includes white!)

www.CristinaAcosta.com

I mixed acrylic paint with water to create the neutral color of these suede shoes. The original suede was a light pearl gray. Notice how the paint settled after a few days to reveal the amount of identifiable hues in the taupe color. Shaking the jar resulted in the neutral shoe color of these oxfords. See the note below for directions.

Tan, taupe, beige, mushroom, sandstone, putty and stone are just a few of the names for light neutral colors. Think of a neutral color and if you are new to color mixing, you might think of a neutral as brown mixed with white. And you can get a typical version of a neutral from that combination.

But here’s the thing about a neutral color. Neutrals can be the result of a surprising blend of colors. And a “good” neutral, one that works with or complements a wide variety of colors often has some distinct colors as part of the mix.

The photo of the suede shoes with a bottle of paint shows you the neutral paint color I obtained after mixing together a variety of colors then painting them on the suede.  After painting the shoes I saved the remaining color in a bottle. A few days later I was surprised to see how much the colors had separated within the water mixture. Note the small layers of red and gold at the bottom, then the majority of green-brown earth tone with a blue layer topped by a beautiful light bright layer of sky blue.

This example showing the color ingredients behind a neutral paint color is a visual explanation of the mixture of colors that can be present in a lovely neutral. This quality is especially important for neutral wall paint colors as they are exposed to different levels and colors of light throughout the day and their base colors can become more or less prominent depending upon the light quality.

____________________________________________________________

Directions to Color Suede Shoes at Home

Note: Embrace the randomness of this process and hope you like the result (or learn to) as it is PERMANENT. You may get permanent water stains or blossoms (as some watercolorists call them) on your suede item.

You will need:

• Artists acrylic paints (in the tube or jar)
• palette knife (for mixing paint)
• stir stick or kitchen whisk (for mixing it with the water)
• water
• painters tape to mask off areas you don’t want to paint (find this in any hardware store)
• a large soft brush and a fan brush for applying the color (or whichever type of brush you prefer)
• Note: Acrylic paint colors I used are: White, Cadmium Red Light, Thalo Red, Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre, Quinacridone Gold, Thalo green, Burnt Sienna
• New (or very clean) light-colored suede item.
• Hairdryer to dry shoes.

What to do:

• Use the painters tape to cover and protect any areas of the suede shoes you don’t want to paint. This only works on things like the soles or hardware. The color will bleed under the tape if you try to section off parts of the suede.
• Mix together a color you like. I began with artists acrylic paint, creating about 3 or 4 tablespoons of color. I mixed the final color with about 20 ounces of water.
• Note: when mixing the color, keep in your mind the color you are covering as it will effect the outcome. Do a small test if possible.
• Saturate your brush with the watery color mixture and apply from one end of the suede item to another. BE SURE to not be too wet as this may cause watermarks. Too dry and the color won’t be even on the item. Applying the color is tricky. The idea is to not go back and retouch an area, but to get all of the color down the first time and dry it all at the same time.
• NOTE: The paint MUST be very watery to not negatively effect the texture of the suede. Too little water will result in smoothing out the texture of the suede.

That’s it!! Hope it all works out. I’d love to hear from anyone who tries this.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Are Blue and Green BFFs?

The other day I was listening to the streaming radio station Kink FM out of Portland, Oregon  and heard an ad for Northwest Natural Gas. It’s official. NW Natural Gas company has co-opted the color blue, even renaming natural gas “Blue”.  And the characteristics they’ve assigned “Blue” are many. According to the NW Natural website “Blue. . .Hates Wasting Energy . . . .. Blue is Reliable . .  Blue Despises High Bills. .  (and).  . Blue and Green are friends.”

Is blue now a responsible, conservative color that also happens to be the environmental movement’s new BFF? The gas company would like us to think so. Especially now that  the marketing kudos for environmental sensitivity are a big positive in the world of commerce.

It’s nothing new for a company to use color to relate both subliminal and overt product and marketing ideas to their potential and repeat customers. It’s a smart thing to do. Ask someone in a roomful of people to describe the color Coca-cola red and you’ll soon find somebody who can. Color and marketing are natural partners.

But a color has more than one personality, despite any one expert or company’s declarations. And when a company uses mainly color to define itself and it’s product, they are also declaring themselves the most pertinent and contemporary interpreters of that color.

Taking that position with a product or a color invites comparisons. If a product is clearly a greater good, comparisons are welcome. But natural gas isn’t one of those products. Like all petrochemical energy sources, there are defined environmental disadvantages to natural gas. Those product disadvantages don’t go away with a re-branding, regardless of the color assigned to it or any of the attributes that color may possess.

Calling natural gas the new “blue” doesn’t turn it green (or make it green’s new BFF) no matter how many times anybody says it. And when the gas company insists that it does, their efforts to tint the green movement into a shade that they wash their product with takes green-washing to a new low.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Traveling to Germany and not knowing German, I wondered how easy it would be to read the signs and get around. I laughed when I saw this sign my first day in Heidenheim, Germany. The language of color spoken internationally! Photo credit: ©Cristina Acosta

Color communicates. Any color expert, designer or artist will agree with that statement. But ask those creative types what exactly a color is communicating and the answers you get may have surprisingly little in common.

Here’s why: Color is a language that continually evolves with the cultures that contribute the shades and tones of meaning each of us sees. And, each individual brings their personal biases and perceptions to the mix, further complicating things.

Yes, you can open most any home decor magazine and read at least one color experts’ opinion based on a study about the calming effects of green – or beige – or . . . whatever the next color may be. But the truth is, the focus group that decides green is calming one year, may decide that mauve is calming next year. And, one more thing to keep in mind,  the experience of an individual and the particular mix of individuals in a focus group is always changing.

Consequently, the meaning of a color is a moving target. One person’s irritating red is another person’s energizing red. It’s all about time and place, people and perception.

So what do you do with this information when you’re standing in the paint store looking for an idea or some advice? Here’s a few tips:

• The first thing to do is to choose a group of colors you love that you think might work for the project. For example – If you’re choosing exterior home colors and are looking for 3 colors, pick at least a dozen that you think will work.

• Then (ideally, take some time with this step) clip the color samples into individual pieces and spread them on the table. Start choosing your favorites.

• When you’ve narrowed it down to at least 4 choices, THEN start choosing where the colors go. Such as this color for the body, this for the trim, this for the gable trim, etc.

Remember that when you are choosing colors, you are bringing a lifetime of experience to the process. Respect that first with a little exploration, then listen to the advice you get from friends and professionals. You’ll have a better feel for the color choices that are right for you.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Walking through the streets of Bordeaux, France I saw these beautiful faded purple doors. Against the grays and browns of the buildings and the weather that day, the violet color brought a subtle and rich dimension to the street view. Photo: Cristina Acosta

Inspired by the colors in the landscape of urban city streets I've been exploring the colors by painting textiles. The sheer matte quality of the silk is the perfect substrate to convey the feeling of the colors from the street in Bordeaux, France. My intent was not to replicate the colors visually as much as to convey the sensations I received while walking through the colors in that landscape. Photo credit: Cristina Acosta

I’ve been thinking a lot about color and culture, and have been exploring that theme in my fine art for many years.

The landscape around us effects how we perceive color. The geography of a place along with the cycle of seasons as well as the weather and light  combine with the presence or absence of human culture to create the colors of a place.

In my  paintings and drawings other concerns (like image or texture) overtake this concept, so I decided to work with these color ideas in textiles.

Painting silk scarves for myself or friends is a relaxing way for me to play with color stories.  (And I have something fun to wear when I’m done!) This week I painted this silk scarf directly from the inspiration of some recent travels. I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel with my teenage daughter, Isabella Barna during her fencing competition season. She competed in a few fencing World Cups, so we both enjoyed traveling to both small and large towns in Europe for the events.

The many changes in landscape I’ve experienced this year contrast in my mind, mixing with the sensations of place. Each memory has a different palette of colors and values. Playing with these memories and translating them to visual ideas allows me to re-live the sensations of the memories as I create visual structure around them. It’s sort of like selecting photos for a scrapbook page, I select among the thoughts and feelings of memory for the creative expression.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Roasted pasilla chiles stuffed with a ground pork and green chile mixture, topped with a pecan and queso fresco cream sauce, garnished with pomegranate seeds and served with sauteed plaintains.

Grilled prickly pear cactus leaves, jicama and tomatoes are julienned then tossed in a lime and olive oil dressing.

With color on my mind, this past weekend I cooked up a dinner party and menu with a color theme – the red, white and green of the Mexican flag.

Inspired by the cookbook, Frida’s Fiesta’s – Recipes and Reminiscences of Life with Frida Kahlo by Marie-Pierre Colle and Guadalupe Rivera, I’ve been experimenting with the recipes and themes in the book. A very beautiful cookbook, the photos and stories are inspiring. The recipes. . . well, they remind me of my abuelita’s (grandmother’s) recipes. Something very important is missing from most of them. The missing item is usually an ingredient, amount or technique that ranges between  crucial to the success of the recipe to a minor taste problem. Maybe the recipe editor had more to do with this than Frida did, but nonetheless, reading her cookbook reminds me of my abuelita’s passionate artistic temperament (she was a concert pianist and gifted chef). The recipes that my abuelita  gave me were always more of a suggestion than a solution.

With that in mind, I’ve been playing with the recipes, using them as a melody line I can embellish or rearrange as I play. I’m putting together Mexican / Chicano inspired recipes for a new cookbook I’ll publish this summer. Till then, here are a few of the dishes. Last weekend I presented each dish in the Mexican flag color scheme of red, green and white as a homage to Mexico and because it was a  fun design element to work with.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

One of the unexpected changes that can happen to the aging eye includes the color yellow. For some people the lens of the eye becomes increasingly dense and more yellow with age. With that change, contrast sensitivity declines and dark colors can be difficult to distinguish from each other.

The yellowing effect may not be affecting you personally, but if you are a retailer or manufacturer selling products, how your products are being perceived by the older customer with this condition affects your sales.

The color yellow is common in many natural landscapes throughout the year. I took this photo of bamboo stalks in Bordeaux, France while walking through the public garden in the downtown.

Yellow labels can “disappear” against a bright yellow background. Decreased contrast sensitivity can cause blue and black  or blue and green to appear the same. White or light colored type on a black or dark colored background may be almost impossible to read for that customer.

Colors not only affect people differently because of personal and cultural conditioning and experiences. The visual  abilities of each person affects how and if they perceive a color. Keeping in mind the possibility for differences in color perceptions is especially important for color consultants. Yellow is not always a sunny color.

Read more about the aging eye at LighthouseInternational.org

www.CristinaAcosta.com

The yellow loft roofs the dining area and juts into the space of the living room of this home. The shape as well as the color act as a bridge between the red dining room walls and the green living room walls.

One thing leads to another. That’s as true in life as it is for interior design. It’s especially true if you’ve ever started remodeling or redecorating just one room of a home, then stood back when it was done only to realize that other areas of the house need updating.

And in the same sense, one color leads to another as you walk through any building. Creating a paint color scheme blending good color design with the architecture of your home is like putting together a 3-D puzzle. One part of that puzzle changes and everything changes. And change can be complicated.

It’s easy to think about home color as mostly about the walls, but the reality is that the walls, floors, ceiling, trims and decor are all design elements that combine within the open spaces of the home. Now add to that the thousands of choices you have in most any tile, furniture, lighting and paint store and the puzzle pieces of design that seemed so easy to sort are now in danger of becoming a pile of confusing shapes and colors.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by color, you’re not alone. Putting together entire interior design color schemes can be a lot to think about. But, mixing colors around your home gets a little simpler if you think about those color combinations as a master color plan.

Creating a master color plan is what I do for my clients. They choose the paint colors they like and I help them make those choices (or similar choices) work with the rest of their home decor as well as the architecture of the home.

Here are a few tips I share with color consulting clients to help them organize their interior paint colors:

• Identify the colors in your home that you aren’t going to change, such as the flooring, kitchen cabinetry, window coverings, countertops, etc., and be sure that the paint colors you choose complement the colors of those things.
• Look at the paint colors in natural light and at night under artificial light to be sure the color looks good 24/7.
• Sample your color choices in several places of the room so that you can see the effect of light on the paint color.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Cross of marigold petals adorns this grave in the cemetery in the town of Ocotopec, Mexico. I took this photo with the scent of copal incense threading through the air in smokey streaks mixing with the sounds of mariachi musicians. Yellow flowers are for the mature souls of adults.

The mystery of life and death and spirit, the reality of change and the beauty of everything is a defining aspect of Mexican culture. Throughout Mexico and most anywhere a significant number of Mexican-Americans live, altars adorn public & private spaces. This spirituality with ancient roots is most visible during the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival  November 1st and 2nd.

Dia de los Muertos  (the Day of the Dead) is celebrated in Mexico and by Mexican Americans living in the U.S. As a holy day it is connected to the Catholic holy day All Saints’ Day, but is actually much older and pre-dates the Aztec. The celebration is spread through various other countries in Central and South America.

I saw this woman in the market in Cuernavaca. She carries the flowers for Dia de los Muertos altars. White is for the souls of deceased children.

Through the month of October, people prepare for Dia de los Muertos by preparing altars (ofrendas) to honor the dead. Depending upon the family or community traditions, altars can be elaborate rooms with effigies of the deceased surrounded by beauty, food and candles, or simple altars with a picture and a few items.

Brilliant colors and stark value contrasts between dark and light with the addition of warm earthen tones make up the complex palette of colors associated the Mexican Celebration of Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). Not only are these colors seen among the flowers and decorations that make up the various ofrendas  (altars), foods and decor that are part of the celebration, the colors metaphorically and symbolically mirror the mystical underpinnings of the Dia de los Muertos celebration.

Because the veil between the living and the spirit world thins at this time of year, the colors of the Hispanic celebration of the Day of the Dead are both strong in hue and in contrast. Bridging those

Images of bones emerge from the warm skintone browns of this traditional Day of the Dead bread proffered by a street vendor in Ocotopec. Called Pan de Muerte (Bread of the Dead), the bread is sweet without being overwhelmingly rich.

strong colors and values is the warm brown color of pan de muerte, the traditional bread of Dia de los Muertos. Motifs of crossed bones emerge from small loaves the warm color of brown skin. What a beautiful metaphor and visual symbol of the ephemeral quality of life expressed through color meanings and symbology.

I didn’t grow up with the actual Dia de los Muertos celebration. Instead, when I was under the age of 10 my family celebrated a unique combination of All Saints Day and Halloween with a piñata (a Mexican tradition of a paper effigy of an animal or object that is stuffed with candy and then destroyed by children to release the treats). It was the type of culturally morphed celebration that fit into the surrounding neighborhood of Palos Verdes, California during the 60′s and 70′s.

Since then I’ve explored how the holiday is celebrated in Mexico and incorporated some of those ideas into my personal life. Being that I love making retablos (altars) with images of the divine feminine, such as the Guadalupe and Conquistadora, and have those retablos all over my house, decorating an altar for the season comes naturally.

For me personally, the time of Dia de los Muertos begins in October and continues to about mid-November. This is a beautiful season and  a time that I  specifically ask my ancestors and deceased friends and relatives to visit me with their gifts of wisdom and love. I usually get some sort of revelation or enriching experience during this time that especially helps me for the ensuing year.

Here are some guidelines to the symbolism of the items on a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda (altar):

Composition of a Dia de los Muertos Ofrenda (altar of offerings):

• Water – Source of Life
• Salt – Purification
  

  An effigy of the deceased (in photo) made of loofas draped in her clothing is the centerpiece of this huge ofrenda (altar) taking up an entire bedroom. I visited this home in Ocotopec and the family allowed this photo. Note the beauty and care put into every aspect of the decorations and offerings.

• Candle or light – Eternal love
• Copal or incense Offering to the gods -  Transmits prayers
• Flowers — the yellow flowers represent the sun, wealth and light to help souls find their way. The white flowers represent purity and often represent children.
• Mat, bed, table — a symbolic place of rest for souls. This is often the surface on which the altar rests.
• Toys — for young souls.
• Bread, tamales — sustenance
• The neck and the canes (bones) in the form of a wheel — this is the symbol on the Pan de Muerto, the traditional bread for Dia de los Muertos
• Items that pleased the deceased person and usually a photo, sometimes an effigy draped in
  

  Candy skulls made of sugar or chocolate are traditional food items for the Dia de los Muertos altar. I took this photo detail of the food offering at a public ofrenda (altar) in Tpotzlan, Mexico.

  the deceased’s clothing.

www.CristinaAcosta.com