A couple months ago I was asked by Ottawa Magazine to be part of their annual Interiors Issue.
The idea was grand…I picked my three top colour picks for 2016, which would be turned into a flower display. The results were spectacular.
The arrangement for my colours was done by Mill Street Florists. It was a work of art.
Here’s a closer view of the shades I picked.
You might not recognize them. They’re not actually on Annie Sloan’s palette….
…but they are made with Chalk Paint™.
One of the extraordinary things about Annie’s paint is that her colours can be mixed together to make new shades. This is a truly unique feature. Almost all household paints contain black pigment. It’s a quick way to pigment paint. But it also means if you mix colours together, you end up with a dull, brown shade eventually — commonly called mud.
But Annie Sloan, being a brilliant artist, wanted you to be able to play around, mix colours, and make new shades. Thus, most of her colours don’t contain black pigment. So you can mix to your hearts content, and never end up with mud. The colours will stay bright and beautiful.
Here’s one of the walls at our new shop. We mixed all the colours with Old White 3 times, to show how you still retain a beautiful shade. That gives you 128 different shades…
(We then did it again with Pure White…oh yes we did!)
But you don’t need to only mix with white. You can play around with mixing the colours too. The turquoise we picked is one we’ve done before…you might remember it from our ‘search for the perfect turquoise’ blog post. The colour is a 50/50 mix of Florence and Greek Blue.
The hot bubble gum pink is a mix of 3 times Pure White to one part Burgundy. Burgundy is a perfect colour to make shocking pinks. It has a strong purple base, which — when mixed with white — keeps the hotness of the pink.
And speaking of purples, the rich, aubergine purple is now our absolutely most favourite purple mix. It’s done by mixing a 50/50 mix of Aubusson Blue and Burgundy. We loved it so much, we couldn’t resist using it on this vintage dresser recently.
Isn’t she a beauty?
Here’s a little cheat sheet for these mixes:
Have some fun with these mixtures, or make some up of your own!
Looking forward to seeing your colour creations.
Katrina x