The Blues...and Reds

So, I've been struggling to find my groove this year. Battling a crisis of confidence (spending too much time looking at all the stunningly perfect creations out there!) and feeling emotionally drained (Sabrina has not been happy about starting school), and getting too little sleep; I'm not feeling on form, yet.
But, I'll get there!!

What really helps me to get excited about a project, is when I have "clarity of colour". When I know the colour combinations I'm going to be using, and they're just right, it really inspires and motivates me.
 
For our first class this year, I was steering away from anything red, white and green. Overdosed on Christmas colours in December, you think? (In fact, I'm not even planning on using red for Valentine's classes this year! )
Last year I'd made some owl cookies with blue, brown, and orange (I hadn't planned that combination beforehand; they were just the non-red and non-green bags of icing left over from a class where we'd decorated snowmen and reindeer). I loved the way they looked together.
So, it seemed like a great idea to use those colours again for the "Birds" classes.
But when I did my demo cookies, the orange seemed too orange, and I toned it down to "peach" for the class. Insipid. (And I know the ladies in the class didn't like it either - they came right out and told me! Gotta be tough in this game! )
In an attempt to oomph it up, (in preparation for the next class - not wanting to offend my cookie-gals, again!) I reluctantly added a couple of drops of red: "Red Red", to be precise. Gorgeous result! Exactly the colour I should have been aiming for in the beginning. Inspiration!

"Melon Pink" and Electric Blue

Often, though it can be more frustrating than that, and it can take a lot of tweaking to get the right shade. It doesn't help that the names of gel colours can be very deceptive. (I really can't tell the difference between Sky Blue and Electric Blue, can you??; and clearly Red Red is pink. Melon pink.)

"Melon Pink" at 10 o'clock

Sky vs. Electric?? 

There certainly isn't anything wrong with blending colours - and it's often the only thing you can do if you want a particular shade.

I usually blend together a few (often random!) shades to get the colour I'm looking for. And then have no idea how to reproduce that colour again! So, I think, for my next few projects I'm going to challenge myself to stick to the colour that's in the bottle. Gulp! Will I be able to resist a tweak here and there? Let's see how that works out!

There are some really helpful posts out there - try these ones by Lilaloa, and Sweetsugarbelle, that give great advice about colour and how to create certain shades...

(As a matter of interest, locally we have the Cake Flora gel colors and I strongly suspect that they are the same as the Americolor range. )

Stay tuned for some "no-colour-blending" Valentines projects over the next few weeks!

xxM