Opinions on Colour

First of all thank you all so much for all your support and comments on my last post. My mum's still having yet more tests and sees the specialist again tomorrow, but seems to think they may be closer to a diagnosis, we'll see. She sounds a bit brighter, and is glad now her endoscopy is over!

Anyway, onto other things for now.

I love colour. I'm very, very fussy too, I know which combinations I like and which I don't. None of those complimentary yellows-with-purples and blue-with-oranges thank you very much, although red with green is fine at Christmas. Just about.

As a smallish girl I remember one Christmas my very favourite present of all was a big set of wax crayons - not just your normal 7 colours, I mean a really big set with 5 greens, 3 pinks, 4 purples...you get the idea. I think I must have been about seven. I looked at all the colours for ages - I didn't want to use them, I just wanted to line them all up in a lovely harmonious order - graduating the colours - no clashes. When I was a few years older I got some posh watercolour pencils in a tin - I still have them. They always had to go in the tin in the same order - again, no clashes next to each other, just the best order for adjacent colours to merge together as much as possible.
I'm still, of course, exactly the same, because I think that sort of thing is a really fundamental part of who you are. Sadly I don't have time to spend hours lining things up in beautiful harmonious colour-sequences all day, but I can at least ban bright yellow from the garden and grow single-colour flowers in my chosen colours ( magenta and orange often - I copy Sarah Raven much of the time and get my seeds from her). I don't like bright yellow, unless it's sunflowers, and even then I prefer the ruby red ones.

Aren't people strange? I plan to become more eccentric as I age.

Anyway, I absolutely love choosing and combining colours in my felting - it's one of the reasons I love the process so much, the ability to blend layers of different colours and merge them together. I have, of course, tended to use colours I'm drawn to myself - I've never made a bright yellow anything, nor grey, nor beige, I can't wear those colours and just don't feel positive about them!
But it's really good to be forced to think outside your own box. The times when friends have asked me to make particular things in colour combinations they've chosen have been good for me, and I've discovered I like the end results even though I wouldn't have chosen them myself.

Why am I rambling about this now?
Well I had a lovely lady buy some hairslides from my website last week, and she asked if I could make two more, in navy and maroon. These are some of my normal colours, bright or light, not sombre at all.

I was quite unsure about such deep colours but made a small selection of navy, plum and maroon flowers,

and found that with the beads (beautiful lustred ones that you can't see fully in the photo) and the green leaf

I did like them after all, and I was glad to be taken into slightly new colour territory. So I perhaps need to experiment with new combinations every now and again and not be too set in my ways!

Of course we should stick with what we love best and be true to our own styles and designs, but it did make me think more about experimenting a bit. Do you stay in your comfort zone of styles and colours if you craft, or in the way you dress or furnish your home, or are you always trying new things out?!