How to Use a Vision Board to Create a Color Palette

A large part of getting my groove back is to create a blog that I'm really proud of.  Not that I'm not proud of what I have now, but it's time to take The Creative Cubby to the next level in a way that represents who I am as a crafter, a blogger and a person.

What stuck out the most to me was the vibe of my blog - specifically, the color palette.  It was a little too... gentle.  Exhibit A.

Pastel, soft, and while beautiful, not very me.  I needed a color palette change - bad.

So, like any sane person, I started with Pinterest.  I created a private board title "Creative Cubby Vision Board" and started pinning whatever visually spoke to me.

I swept the DIY & Crafts, Photography, Travel, Architecture, Design and Photography categories, pinning anything and everything that caught my eye.  I would add pin after pin, review my board, delete a few that no longer spoke to me as loudly as others and return to pinning.  I repeated the cycle countless times.

A theme was clearly developing so I searched by related key words: surf, ocean, Hawaii, teal.  This led to even more images that caught my eye and I pinned away!

Let me tell you, this was incredibly fun!  Watching my taste and style come together visually was amazing.

Also, I realized how useful this would be in discovering your home decor or fashion style too!  Coincidentally, this board reflects my home decor, so...at least I know I'm consistent.

Finally, I felt like I had a carefully curated vision board with about 30 images.  When I gathered my favorite images, I ended up with this:

See something you like?  My Creative Cubby Vision Board is now public.  Pop on over to pin to your own!

Obviously, I like the ocean.

At this point, you can stop to review your own vision board and start pulling out color themes.  For instance, I'm clearly drawn to blues and greens with pops of bold colors.  If you're using this for home decor, print out your vision board or have it digitally available as you head to the hardware store.  Use your images to compare to paint chips to piece together a color palette.

If you want to get extra fancy and have access to it, Photoshop is a great tool to pull out colors.  Using the eyedropper tool, you can actually select precise pixels of the image and Photoshop will give you the color hex color number.  This allowed me to get very specific about which colors I wanted to use for fonts in my logo and around my blog.  Though it did take a few tries...

I started with empty boxes.  I knew I wanted four colors so the black was just a placeholder.

Using the eyedropper, I started pulling out colors.  Below is the first iteration.  After letting it sit for a day, something didn't feel right.  I couldn't tell if it was the blue or the green, but something didn't mesh for me.

I took a quick poll of my close advisors {aka Mom, significant other, best friends} and we identified that it was either the blue or the green.  One of them had to change.  I put together two more combinations where I only changed one element.

Still no good.  There wasn't a balance and it didn't feel bold enough.  The colors were still reading gentle.  On a whim, I tried to find the darkest blue on vision board and work from there.  What happened was magic!  It's phenomenal what a navy blue will do!

Suddenly, the color palette spoke to me in the same way my vision board did.  I'm confident in the foundational colors but now I can pop in bold colors, like oranges, yellows and pinks, that won't feel out of place or overpower them.  Basically, I now have a color palette I can have fun with!

I've already put the colors into play and am loving the results!

So... What do you think of the new look?  How would you use this process in your own life?