California Paints Color Challenge (And a little color forecasting test)

Back in November, I entered a contest put together by California Paints. The contest was called "Color Challenge" and was a call "to the professional interior design community to determine the featured colors for our 2011 color card series."

Each designer could enter up to 10 three-color palettes using California Paints' hues. Five palettes for interior schemes, and five palettes for exterior schemes. I went ahead and submitted all 10 schemes thinking I would increase my chances. Well, it must have worked because last week I was contacted by California Paints and was informed that the company would be using four of my color schemes in their color cards, coming out this spring. There will also be an online "Designer Selection Gallery" featuring the winners of the contest along with further information about their selected palettes.

I decided to give you a sneak peek of my color palettes, and also provide you with a little color challenge of your own. Below are the 10 palettes I submitted. (You might notice that I named these palettes after places in California. I was trying to bring some more "California" into California Paints, because, ironically enough, you can't actually buy California Paints in the state of California. I was assured by the Marketing Director in Massachusetts that they are currently working on a westward expansion.)

Anyway, here are the palettes. See if you can guess which four color schemes were chosen for winners! (Hint: three are exterior; one is interior.) On Thursday I'll post the four palettes that will be featured in California Paints 2011 Color Cards. 

(Please note that these are photos of color cards, therefore the colors aren't 100% accurate representations of the actual paint colors.)

The Golden Gate

Crystal Cove

Monterey Coast

Old Hollywood

Redwood Forests

California Sunset

Stormy Beaches

Napa Valley Wine Country

San Diego Beaches

Old California Mission

If you are ready to create your own personalized color palette for your home or business,  please call me at 650.867.3896, or shoot me an email at kelly@artestyling.com to discuss your project.

To Thank + To Give

Well, I had certainly hoped to put together a more poignant, thorough post for Thanksgiving, but since it is already 3pm on Wednesday, I have resigned myself to the fact that it probably won't happen. Client design projects, interview questions and the baking of one of my favorite veggie dishes have taken precedence to a lengthy blog post. But instead of being frustrated and disappointed with myself, I realize that these are choices that I have made and that I would have things no other way.

We can all choose so many things in our lifetimes. How we want to feel. Who we want to be. What we want to do. Where we want to go. Who we want to be with. How we want to treat others...and ourselves. Something that I'm learning to understand is that we make choices in life based on either Love or Fear. When we choose something through Fear we are not making an authentic choice. We become influenced by something that doesn't represent our true self. And that can make us angry, bitter, stressed, anxious, etc.  However, when we come from a place of Love, we can then free ourselves from the burdens of inauthenticity. It can often be difficult to recognize just how many choices we have, and how many of the choices we make are based on Fear. So, this Thanksgiving, I have decided that I will give thanks for the gift of choice: the choice to live in Love, not Fear.

Happy Thanksgiving, all! Enjoy your day. Enjoy your friends and family. Enjoy yourselves.

“To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.”

 -Albert Schweitzer

Jewelry Wall Art Project

Who stores their jewelry in something like this?

I did, until I decided I was tired of not knowing what jewelry I even owned. By having it all crammed into this jewelry box, I never could find what I needed when I needed it. And every once in awhile, when it was time to re-organize my little treasures, I'd always be surprised to find something that I had completely forgotten about. That's the problem with these sorts of boxes.

The other problem is that I have started to collect vintage jewelry that is just too beautiful to hide away in an box. Inspired by my friend Valerie, who has a lovely jewelry line which I blogged about a few months back (Introducing...Nettie & Val's Jewelry Line) I decided to ditch this ugly thing and put my jewels on display. 

Part of Valerie's personal jewelry collection.

If you need a better solution for your jewelry, too here's a step-by-step guide to my Jewelry Wall Art Project.

Items needed:

1 Canvas

Paint (Optional) 

Scrapbook paper

Spray Mount

Double-stick tape

Command™Damage-Free Hooks 

Here's a canvas I've had laying around for a looooooong time. It was painted green ages ago. This particular canvas is a 36" x 36", but any size would work. It really depends on how much jewelry you want to hang.

I also had this scrapbook paper on hand. Kind of weird, because I don't scrapbook. But I thought it was pretty so I bought it, figuring it would come in handy at some point. These particular sheets are about 12" x 12". I used a variety of different patterns in the same color family. Some were from the same package, but I mixed in a few sheets from other paper sets. You could certainly use all the same paper, or even cover with wallpaper scraps.

Once I had my canvas and paper selected, I played around with a few ways to layout the paper. I opted for a symmetrical patchwork pattern.

I then taped the edges of the backside of each sheet of paper with double-stick tape, and sprayed the rest of the surface area with spray mount. (You gotta move quick with this stuff! Definitely know where each piece of paper is going before you commit to the spray.)

After I finished with my gluing, it was time to figure out where my hooks would go. Before I even started with the hooks, I laid my necklaces down to figure out how much space I would need between each hook. Each necklace has a different shape and different visual weight depending on its color and material, and I wanted to make sure the overall look would be balanced. 

For my jewelry hanging hooks, the perfect solution was Command™Damage-Free Hooks. These things are amazing!!! They come in different finished and sizes, so you really have a great range of options stylistically. I opted for the Antique Bronze finish to work with the metals I already have in the bedroom. I hardly need to explain how they work, because they are completely dummy-proof, but basically you just peel paper of a self-adhesive strip, stick it on the hook, peel another piece of paper off the adhesive and stick to your surface...in this case, the paper covered canvas. I used a total of 14 hooks in both the medium and small sizes.

And...here's the final product!

I'm loving my new jewelry display. Only problem? It doesn't hold everything. Guess I'll have to make another one...

(Got great ideas for Command™ hooks? They are currently hosting a contest on their Facebook page. You can win $500 and a flip camera!! You bet I'm entering! Who couldn't use $500???)

If you are ready to eliminate fear from your color and design decisions please call me at 650.867.3896, or shoot me an email at kelly@artestyling.com to discuss your project.

Potato Leek Soup with Homemade Herbed Croutons

One of my favorite fall recipes is Potato Leek Soup. Easy, hearty, healthy and veggie - can't get much better than that! The original recipe came from my parents who pulled it from some food magazine, but I've made it so many times, I don't follow a recipe any more. And the Herbed Croutons are my yummy little addition. As far as I'm concerned, everything's better with croutons.

Potato Leek Soup

2 leeks

1 white onion

6-8 potatoes (I used Yellow Wax, but other varieties are fine, too.)

2 TBSP olive oil

6 cups water and/or veggie broth

salt and pepper

Herbed Croutons

stale bread

olive oil

salt and pepper

dried herbs (I used Penzey's Pasta Sprinkle and Turkish Oregano)

1) Trim, wash and chop the leeks.

2) Slice the onion.

3) Heat olive oil in stock pot.

4) Saute onion and leeks until soft, about 15-20 minutes.

5) Peel and cube potatoes.

6) Add potatoes and broth (and/or water) to onions and leeks. Bring to a boil. Turn down heat to medium low and simmer until potatoes are soft. About 20-25 minutes. 

7) Bust out the immersion blender. This is an amazing kitchen tool. Go buy one if you don't have one. (You can also transfer soup to a blender in batches, but it's a little trickier.)

8) Puree soup to desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

For croutons...

1) Pull out your rock hard stale bread...whatever you have on hand.

2) Chop bread into cubes. (If it's really hard, you'll need a sharp Chef's knife, not a bread knife. And you may need safety goggles to protect your eyes from shooting bits of crust.)

3) Transfer bread cubes to bowl and generously coat with olive oil and/or butter. Season with salt, pepper and dried herbs. (I use whatever's on hand, but 

Penzey's Pasta Sprinkle is a really delicious blend.)

4) Toast seasoned cubes in toaster oven (or bake/broil in regular oven) for about 5 minutes. They are easy to burn, so keep your eye on them!

Perfect little croutons! I rarely buy store-bought croutons anymore because these are so tasty and easy...and they use up something that might otherwise be thrown away.

And there you have it - Potato Leek Soup with Homemade Herbed Croutons. Mmmmmmm.

I tend to make a lot of soups in the fall and winter, so maybe I'll share more recipes as the cold weather kicks in. Soups are such a wonderfully comforting food.

Enjoy!

My New Kelly Green Dresser

My new green dresser was delivered last week...and I'm in love!

If you happened to read my previous post, you'll know that my dad made this beautiful piece. He's been making furniture and cabinetry for years now, but just keeps getting better and better. I think this is his best piece yet!

I found the pulls at Belmont Hardware, a local hardware store. This is usually the first stop for me when I am searching for hardware for clients, as they have a really broad selection. I spotted these guys first in a discontinued bin...but there were only four of them. 

They were so cool, I was determined to make them work. The dresser has four small upper drawers, so I just needed to find a coordinating pull for the other 6 large lower drawers.

Bingo! Found.

I got all 16 pieces for just under $100. Not bad.

Now, I'm sure you all want to know about the color.

I had been dying to bring a Kelly Green into the bedroom, as that was my alternate choice for the wall color when we painted. Opting for Fleeting Green by Sherwin Williams, which is a lovely but very pale blue green, I needed to introduce some highly saturated colors to bring more energy to the space. "Soft" and "soothing" is just not my thing.

After studying MANY greens in different lights, at different angles (probably even in my dreams), I landed on Benjamin Moore #566. Just the right amount of yellow without being too lime-y.

I just realized today that this color actually has a name, and not just a number. My large paper sample didn't have a name on the back - just "566". And I didn't bother to check the paint deck. This information probably would have saved my dad a big headache, but then I wouldn't be able to share the following color story...

It all started when I told my mom over the phone that I had chosen a color for the dresser. 

"I finally chose a color for the dresser. Number 566 by Benjamin Moore," I said. 

"Ok. What color is it?" she asked.

"Well," I responded, "it's like a Kelly Green."

"Oh - that sounds pretty. I'll tell your dad."

"Ok, Mom. Number 566. You're writing it down, right?"

"Yes," she said. "I'm writing it down right now."

A few days later my mom sent me photos of the painted dresser. (My dad works at warp speed.) It looked a little more blue-green than I thought it should, but it was probably just a lighting issue.

Pretty, right? 

Anxious to clear out the "shop" (aka garage) for other projects, my parents came down to deliver the piece just a few days later. Once I saw it in person, my suspicions were confirmed.

"Ummmm....is this the color I spec'd? Number 566?" I asked, hoping that I was imagining the blue-ish undertones.

"It's 'Kelly Green'," replied my Dad. "That's what your mother told me."

"Yeah, well, the number was 566. It is 'like' a Kelly Green. Did you get number 566?"

"No...I got 'Kelly Green'. When I went to buy the paint, the guy said that Kelly Green and number 566 didn't match. So I got Kelly Green cuz that's what your mother told me."

Uh-oh. Here's "Kelly Green" by Benjamin Moore next to #566, also known as "Bunker Hill Green."

Yeah. Not quite the same. The "Kelly Green" is quite a bit more saturated and has a lot of blue in comparison to the "Bunker Hill" I brought a few of the "Kelly Green" painted drawers into the bedroom to see if I could make it work, but it looked really funky and childlike. I like playful colors, but it was a little too playful.

So, we loaded everything back in the van and I handed my dad the #566 paper paint swatch. We all determined that it needed to be re-painted.

The moral of the story is that it is very important to communicate clearly (to your parents or otherwise) when you are speaking the language of color. Don't tell your mom that a color is "like" a color that might actually exist in a paint deck. And double check to see if your paint color has a coordinating name for its number. And, when in doubt, double check the specs! 

Fortunately, it was an easy enough fix (for me, anyway!) and the end product is just beautiful.

Thanks, Dad! Next time we talk color, we'll be a bit more careful. 

Does anyone else have a funny color communication story they'd like to share?

If you are ready to eliminate fear from your color and design decisions... please call me at 650.867.3896, or shoot me an email at kelly@artestyling.com to discuss your project.

Branding and Collaborating through Interior Design and Color

I recently wrapped up a commercial interior design project for Top 1 Oil in San Mateo. I was brought in by the client, whom I had previously worked with on some residential color design, to assist with paint color and materials selection for their new office space. It was such a pleasure having a client like Top 1 Oil, which is entirely family owned and operated. Founded in 1979 by William A. Ryan, the company is thriving due to the hard work and dedication of three generations of Ryans. And the most dedicated of all? 90 year old Kate Ryan who works for the company every day...and looks fabulous!

Before - Lobby/Hallway

After - Lobby/Hallway Colors used: Benjamin Moore's Key West Ivory, Nimbus and Moroccan Red

Before - Second floor workstations

After - Second floor workstations Colors used: Benjamin Moore's Key West Ivory, Moroccan Red, and Blue Nova with Nimbus trim; Carpet - Atlas Limbo in Iron Charm.  One challenging aspect of working on Top 1's color design was in staying true to the branding colors, which are basically primary red, yellow and blue, while at the same time creating an office design that was professional and not overly childlike. I brought in the gray - Nimbus - to give an edge of modern sophistication, and also to replicate the look of the existing aluminum door frames. We also opted for a very dark grey and black carpet to bring a sense of groundedness to the space. I loved that it simulated asphalt - very apropos for the company!

Before - Second floor offices

After - Second floor offices Colors used: Benjamin Moore's Key West Ivory and Blue Nova

During this project I had the privilege of working with Debra Disman, decorative painter extraordinaire, of Artifactory Studio in San Francisco. I met Debra last year through an IACC seminar, and though I had seen her work via facebook, Twitter, etc., we hadn't yet had the opportunity to tackle a project together. As a matter of fact - this was the first time I had worked with any decorative painter on a job. The project went incredibly well. So well, in fact, that the client has recently asked Debra to come back and do MORE work for them in the space. Isn't that the ultimate compliment?

Debra did two installations on the second floor of the offices. Both were nearly exact replications of the company's logo. This might sound easy - it's just copying, right? Yeah - it's not quite as simple as that. I was really amazed at the process myself. Kudos to Debra for making it look effortless.

Before It was at the Feng Shui consultant's suggestion that we incorporated the company logo on the back wall of the second floor. She also highly recommended that we have a heavy dose of red on the back wall. Rather than bathe the entire logo wall in red, however, we opted to place the red just on the pony wall. The primary red and blue sitting right next to each other would have created too high of a contrast and would have taken away from the impact of the logo itself. A pale yellow (Benjamin Moore's Key West Ivory) became a more appropriate background color - and it was actually used as the main color in the entire office.

After  Debra's finished product. The graphically designed logo (from print and web) was used as a guide for actual Pantone colors, proportion and scale.

Debra hard at work.

The other decorative installation was added to an adjacent wall on the same floor. We did a very wide stripe design taken from the lower section of the large logo. (Debra has a few better photos on her article.)

After - Debra's Top 1 Oil "stripe" with Benjamin Moore's Key West Ivory

The collaborative process was really fun on this project. We worked hard, had lots of details to decide upon...and a few moments of "ok...who's gonna figure this one out?" But that's pretty much how every design job goes. The beauty of this project was that we had such a great group of people - the clients, contractor, architect, subcontractors - everyone was really fantastic to work with. Debra took note of this exceptional collaboration and wrote about it in her most recent article for the Bay Area Women's Journal, "Business Branding: It Takes a Village to Paint a Logo!" 

For the article, Debra asked the client and I to answer a few questions about the collaborative process. I'd like to share with you a little more of our Q&A that didn't make the final edit. Enjoy!

DD} Do you see collaboration as a key part of the design process for the new Top 1 Oil office building? Why do you think collaboration is important in the design process?

After - Second floor office Colors used: Benjamin Moore's Key West Ivory and Nimbus

KB} I couldn't have done my job without collaborating with the client. Although I had worked with Mary and Kate Ryan on residential work prior to the Top 1 Oil job, it was imperative that I learned about the company before moving forward with any design specifications. Frank, in particular, had very distinct visions about the company image and how it was to be portrayed through the interior and color design. Meeting and working with Top 1 Oil representatives was a must for me. If I had done any work without their input it would not have been as authentic...and the end result would have been more of my vision for the space - not theirs. The collaboration allowed us to create the space together, and to achieve an end result that supported the needs of the client as well as their clients.

Before - Another shot of the second floor back wall

After - Another shot of Debra's masterful work!

On another note, we also collaborated with a Feng Shui consultant. Before any design work begun, the Feng Shui consultant did a report and developed an energy flow strategy for us to use as a guideline. This turned out to be a very good starting point for the design and we did our best to respect the suggestions she made.

Debra showcasing the finished product. (And yes - this was summer in California and she has a winter coat on. It was FREEZING that day!)

Additionally, collaborating with Debra, the decorative painter was a wonderful experience. Debra and I worked closely on the design and layout of the company logo, which really is the showstopper in the the space! The client knew from the beginning of the project that they wanted to incorporate the company logo somehow, and when I suggested we bring in Debra, they were thrilled with the idea. She did an amazing job! Although it took several meetings and emails to decide on the exact placement and scale of the logo, it was well worth the hard work. And the collaboration with the client allowed them to feel like they had a hand in the design. Without the client input  a disassociation can occur. Why not bring them in on the design decisions? It only allows for a better end product - one that truly represents the client, the company and the brand - when they are intimately involved. I wouldn't have it any other way.

And a pic of me. (Per Anna's request.)

How do you feel about collaboration on design projects? Please share your experiences!

If you need assistance with color and materials for your commercial space, and value branding and collaboration, call me at 650.867.3896, or shoot me an email at kelly@artestyling.com to discuss your project.