almost crunchy: Tools for Choosing Your Colors

We went through quite a few color schemes before we came up with one that would work well with the barn that we are having our reception in. The first thing I was attracted to was a mixture of peach, coral, gold, pink, and dusty rose. The picture below, of a redhead, inspired me.

But as soon as I mentioned it to future-hubby, he immediately shied away from such feminine details. So, I started thinking about us (and what Mr. CB wouldn't say no to) and I started visualizing colors based on natural elements: slate from river rock, emerald like lake water, white like flowers, tan like sand, leafy green like trees.

But, when it came time to actually start picking colors, I was swayed in a completely different direction thanks to this cake picture:

It feels so sunny and warm--two things I associate with California, where I'm from. Also, fall in the mountains of Colorado is filled with brushed whites in Aspen's branches and golden yellows in their leaves. I decided yellow, cream, white, brown, and gold would suffice. Especially in a wooden barn surrounded by white tablecloths.

I found a couple of helpful tools online that break down your color scheme so you can carry it from vendor to vendor, detail to detail. First is DaGraeve.com's Color Palette Generator. You enter the URL of an image you are attracted to and it spits out the colors that are in that image. I put in this picture:

And it gave me this:

Not exactly what we're going with--we'll be using more whites, creams, and less khaki tones--but close.

The next tool I tried was Idee's Multicolor Search Lab Flickr Set. You put in your colors and it returns all of the images it finds on Flickr that include those colors. Here's what I put in: