Color Theory for Fashionistias - Three Easy Steps to Perfect Color Every Time
by: Carrie Johnson
Color is everywhere, in your clothes, in your jewelry. Color is life. Fashion and color coordination can make or break your carefuly planned outfit.
Here's a bit of color theory with a fashionista bent.
Primary colors
These are red, blue and yellow. In theory, you can make any color from these three primaries (except white, which is really an absence of color). In practice, it depends on what red, blue or yellow you start with, but we are not mixing paints here, so just remember that the primary colors are red, blue and yellow. You'll learn why in the next step.
The secondary colors are the colors you get from mixing equal amounts of any two primaries. (If the primaries are pure, mixing all three will give you black.)
The secondaries are purple, orange and green.
Now why do you care?
Well, primaries and secondaries together give us complementary colors. The complement of the color is the color directly across from it on the color wheel, or if starting with a primary, the color made from mixing the other two primaries. So essentially a color and its complement contain all of the primaries between them.
Red's compliment is green (Merry Christmas!). Yellow's complement is purple. Blue's complement is orange. This is as much contrast as you can get between colors of the same value (brightness or darkness). So if you want to make a bold statement, the primaries are a treat.
Enter the secondaries
The secondary colors are made by mixing equal parts of any two complementaries. So the secondary colors are green (yellow and blue), orange (yellow and red) and purple (blue and red).
Let's say you have a yellow dress and you want this outfit to be a traffic stopper. If it's for daytime, you can use bold purple jewelry and accessories. This classic combination of purple and yellow is eye catching. It can be sophisticated and definite or more playful, depending on the yellow and purple you start out with.
However, you don't always want to be quite that much the center of attention. What do you do to make more subtle fashion statements, but still use colors well?
The yellow and purple we used above are complementary colors. This means they are directly across from each other on the color wheel.
The colors to each side of our main color's complement are the triad colors. (Triad because the color you start with plus the two others make three colors total.) The triads are our friends for choosing jewelry or other accessories. Let's look at our yellow dress again. This time we're wearing it to a business meeting. What would be appropriate jewelry? Gold on yellow is too close -- it will tend to wash out. The whole outfit will look drab (more drab than if you didn't use the gold jewelry).
Silver will work, particularly if the silver is a bit pale and the yellow of the dress if very vivid. But you don't have to stick with gold or silver. There are many colored gems and jewels out there. Try a sapphire necklace. The blue will nicely set off the yellow and both will sparkle. Or a red brooch. The red can tend towards orange for a brighter effect or towards blue for more contrast.
Now how about the vivid purple blouse you just adore? How to accessorize it? The purple is already such a bold color. Well, we'll do exactly the opposite of what we have done with our yellow dress, since purple is yellow's complement.
For our purple blouse, if you want to be bold and outrageous, go for bright gold (yellow) or just plain yellow jewelry. Silver will not work with the purple since the blue of the silver is too close to our purple color (as the gold was on the yellow dress). Of course red is wonderful with purple, just showing that every rule is made to be broken (with discrimination and taste, of course).
We can team our purple blouse with a tan skirt (tan being a form of yellow) and dress it down for a business meeting. We'll want our jewelry to be a little more subtle. In this case, rather than yellow, let's use the triad colors to purple -- orange or green. These may seem like bold choices, but remember you want your jewelry to be seen, not to blend into the woodwork.
How about an amber pendant? This would be sophisticated and would be set off wonderfully by the purple background without being garish.
Or an emerald brooch and earrings, or a green frog pin. The possibilities are endless within your basic color choices. If you stick with these color constraints, you will not go wrong.
Now let's consider the classic grey business suit. You may be thinking that your grey suit is neutral so you can choose any color at all. This is rarely the case and can be the cause of that ensemble that doesn't quite work.
Most greys tend towards blue (cool) or red/yellow (warm). So first determine if your suit is cool grey or warm grey. If you're having trouble with this (and it can be tough at first), try holding it up to other grey items in your house. You'll start to notice that it looks a bit redder (or yellower) or a bit more blue. This will help you determine the color bias of your grey suit.
Most warm grey used in clothing is a reddish grey. This is because red complements the complexion. But you will find some yellowish greys, particularly in garments with very sophisticated color.
Let's say our suit is a cool grey, so for the purposes of our color choice we'll consider it blue. The complement of blue is orange.
We want to keep this a business suit, so we'll pick the triad to each side of the orange to start with. Red and yellow. This tells us that gold will be a perfect choice for our grey suit. Silver is too blue and would wash out the outfit. You may have noticed that gold tends towards red or yellow. If you are using more than one accessory with the gold, determine whether the primary gold jewelry you will be wearing is reddish gold or yellow gold.
This is done just as we did with the suit itself, by comparing it with other colors.
If the gold is reddish, then keep your other accessories in the red and yellow range. If the gold if yellow, keep the other colors in the yellow orange range.
Note, the description "yellow gold" is for any gold that is not white (silvery). Yellow golds range from a deep red to a very pale yellow, so be sure to check each piece of jewelry when putting together your outfit. A red gold and a yellow gold next to each other will look subtly wrong, unless they are carefully combined in a single piece by a master jeweler. A lack of understanding about the tendencies of gold to be manifested as different colors results in fashion mistakes are that are hard to pin down.
So, let's say we've chosen a beautiful golden horse pin as our primary jewelry piece. We look at it and realize that it tends, ever so slightly, towards red. This makes the rest of our accessorizing easy.
We'll go for red and even towards the cooler reds (those tending towards purple, rather than towards the yellows and oranges). With our golden horse brooch and a deep slightly purplish red scarf our grey business suit stays business-like but acquires a powerful feminine appeal.
If you want more color, choose red's triads, blue or yellow.
So, when choosing the jewelry to complement any outfit follow three simple steps and you won't go wrong:
1) Determine the base color of your clothing. This is the dominant color. If you?re wearing the purple blouse with a tan skirt the purple is the dominant color.
If the outfit has a pattern, squint at it and try to see what color feels most dominant (this is an old artist's trick). If no particular color stands out, determine if the overall pattern is cool or warm as we did with our grey suit. Again squinting helps.
2) Find the complement of this color on your color wheel. If you really want to stand out, use the complement and stop at this step -- you're done!
3) Look at the triad colors next to the complement. These are most often the colors you will use for your accessories. If you want a brighter look you can use both triads. For a more subtle look, choose one or the other and then use variations on this color (the variations on any one color are almost endless).
That's it -- three easy steps that will assure that your outfits are always tres chic and save you hours trying to figure out what's just not quite right or choosing by hit and miss.
Of course, fashion colors change from year to year, but you now understand color combinations and how to put them together in wow combinations, whatever colors your starting with.
Coming in part two, how colors effect each other.
To see this page with color wheels and other illustrations that you can print for reference, go to http://www.gorgeousanimaljewelry.com/fashion-colors.html
Style on!
Carrie
The Jewelry Maven
http://www.gorgeousanimaljewelry.com
About The Author
Carrie Johnson The Jewelry Maven presents articles about jewelry and links to the best (and most hard to find) jewelry on the web. Why search yourself, the Jewelry Maven will do it all for you, darling! http://www.gorgeousanimaljewelry.com
|
Hemoglobin Around The Globe
Hemoglobin Around The Globe
by: Tyler Brooker
Commonly abbreviated as Hb, Hemoglobin, or Heamoglobin, is the iron containing oxygen in our red blood cells which transport metalloproteins. All mammals on earth have hemoglobin, as it is a necessary function in the blood. It contains globin, apoprotien, and four heme groups (organic molecules with one atom of iron attached to each).The gene for the hemoglobin protien can sometimes mutate. This occurence results in one or more of many diseases, but most commonly turns into Thalassemia or Sickle-cell disease.
Heme groups are located in each sub-unit of a hemoglobin molecule. A heme group consists of a single iron atom, held in a heterocyclic ring, commonly known as a "porphyrin". Oxygen binding takes place in this iron atom. The one iron atom binds itself equally to all four nitrogens in the center of the heterocyclic ring, which lies on one plane. In addition, two bonds perpendicular to the plane...
Hemoglobin Around The Globe
Gold ring > Hemoglobin Around The Globe
The Role Of Gold Bullion Coins In Your Portfolio
The Role Of Gold Bullion Coins In Your Portfolio
by: Dean Brown
Are Gold Bullion Coins Worth It?
Today's world offers investors plenty of avenues for their money. Which ones are worth it and which ones just bring unnecessary risks with very low chances of profit?
Many people have turned to buying gold bullion in order to improve their financial situations. We know gold has been around ever since man first started living in a society. Gold has grown together with mankind, or vice-versa, depending on how you want to look at it. Let?s have a look at the process of investing in gold bullion coins and at some of the factors related to such a financial placement.
What Are Gold Bullion Coins?
A gold bullion coin contains one ounce of pure gold. The quality or origin of the gold may differ, however, so make sure to only acquire gold bullions from respected companies that have dozens of years of tradition and trust. Here are some of...
The Role Of Gold Bullion Coins In Your Portfolio
Gold ring > The Role Of Gold Bullion Coins In Your Portfolio
How to Forecast and Budget Your Paid Search
How to Forecast and Budget Your Paid Search
by: Kevin Gold
I?d admit, for marketer, this headline is mundane.
Couldn?t I have come up with a more motivating one?
No and here?s why...forecasting and budgeting is essential and there is no reason to candy-coat the absolute importance of it for starting or maintaining a paid search campaign.
I contend that one of the most common questions asked of us from new clients is, ?What do you estimate our paid search budget will be??
As a business owner it?s crucial to know because it directly affects your financials and influences your bottom line.
Likewise, as a service provider it is essential because it guides the performance metrics used to manage a profitable paid search campaign.
Because is so important, let?s talk about how it?s done.
First, estimating a budget for a paid search campaign is not a perfect science.
There are number of universal...
Gold ring > How to Forecast and Budget Your Paid Search
Who You Should & Shouldn't be Trading Links With
Who You Should & Shouldn't be Trading Links With
by: Paul Middleton
Most people agree that a good and free way of getting traffic to your site is by exchanging links (reciprocal linking) with fellow webmasters.
This is also agreed to be a good way for moving up the search engine results page for your chosen keywords.
However webmasters are often confused as to which sites they should exchange links with.
Many read that incoming links from websites that have the same keywords result in higher rankings with the search engines.
This often results in webmasters setting up reciprocal links with websites that are in direct competition with their own.
Now take just 30 seconds to think of any successful business that hosts advertisements for their competitors.
Does the Coca-Cola website link to Pepsi? Does Ford?s website link to Daimler-Chrysler?s? No of course they don?t, so why would your website link to one...
Gold ring > Who You Should & Shouldn't be Trading Links With
Buying Jewelry For Your Business Part 2 Buying Sterling Silver Jewelry
Buying Jewelry For Your Business Part 2 Buying Sterling Silver Jewelry
by: Sam Serio
Whether you presently own a retail or web based business and are looking for an additional profit center or you are thinking of starting a business, jewelry is a ?no-brainer? choice for a proven product category. The buying public, (particularly women) never tires of jewelry as the choices in color, materials, finishes and styles are endless and innovations are continual. Every generation reinvents jewelry for itself in much the same way that it reinvents music and fashion. Styles change but the basic facts remain the same. If you are a seasoned professional, please consider the following a refresher course. To the new comer, use this information as a foundation for your ongoing jewelry education.
The Facts About Sterling Silver Jewelry
Sterling silver jewelry is enjoying an unprecedented popularity with today?s fashion conscious public. You know how beautiful...
Buying Jewelry For Your Business Part 2 Buying Sterling Silver Jewelry
Gold ring > Buying Jewelry For Your Business Part 2 Buying Sterling Silver Jewelry
How to Safely Buy a Diamond Online ? Part 3 of 3
How to Safely Buy a Diamond Online ? Part 3 of 3
by: Michael Bradley
It is now possible to save 40% to 60% by purchasing a diamond engagement ring from an online diamond retailer, rather than from a bricks-n-mortar High Street jeweller. Online diamond retailers don?t have retail shops, sales staff, large diamond inventories and other associated operating expenses and are therefore able to pass on the cost savings to consumers.
Of course, a diamond might be one of the largest one-off purchases made in one?s lifetime and so it is understandable that many people may be uncomfortable paying for a diamond before it has been seen and examined.
However, as long as the correct research and precautions are taken there should be no reason to be fearful about buying diamonds from Internet diamond merchants.
The three most important aspects of the pre-purchase checks that must be carried out are:
1. Assurance that the diamond business is...
How to Safely Buy a Diamond Online ? Part 3 of 3
Gold ring > How to Safely Buy a Diamond Online ? Part 3 of 3
Understanding the Different Cuts of Diamonds
Understanding the Different Cuts of Diamonds
by: Amanti Leddar
Diamonds are hot favorites all over the world not only because of their dazzling beauty, but also because they are so versatile; they look good on anyone and match everything. Diamonds come in many styles and varieties, called cuts. The value of a diamond in terms of price and popularity depends on the various cuts. The more popular cuts are more expensive than the less popular cuts. This is because the cut of the diamond enhances its beauty. So, you can see two diamonds of equal weight but cut differently with a price difference of hundreds of dollars.
The most popular cut in diamonds is the round cut. When diamonds are cut to look like circles they sparkle brightly. A round brilliant cut is one of the most expensive cuts of diamond. Round cut diamonds are very popular on engagement rings because they look beautiful as part of a multi-stone ring or as a solitaire. The round cut...
Understanding the Different Cuts of Diamonds
Gold ring > Understanding the Different Cuts of Diamonds
Gold ring
This page loaded in 0.05152 seconds.