Orchid You Glad?

Here's the next in my series of botanic garden-inspired prints. The orchids at the U.S. Botanic Gardens are amazing. The different colors and patterns are almost shocking. This was my favorite one (mainly because I'm a little obsessed with pink... talk about shocking, I know).

This is the first stripe I've made so I was unsure about the process but really it was pretty much the same deal. Maybe I'll use this pattern from my DIY Keds that I've been craving? I'm getting ready to order some fat quarters of fabric from Spoonflower to mess with as well. 

I used Kuler again to pull the colors from my photo. You can download them here. Which do you like better the all-green or the green and pink? Should I try something else? As always, try click on them to see the big version and try it out on your desktop! It's a fun, end-of-summer color splash.

Week 6: Kuler Than You

This week in class we're discussing how niche websites and communities (i.e. not Facebook) influence our blogs. I feel like this is a perfect opportunity to share one of my favorite time wasters EVER: Adobe Kuler. I was introduced to this massive time sink by a graphic artist at work. Ironic?

The tool is a color palette creator that helps you find beautiful colors that look perfect together, and it's free! I find it so inspiring to play around with and think of the colors on my blog or website, in a design, in my living room or all of the above. You can even export your colors into Adobe products like this student edition of Photoshop I have been craving (PLEASE, someone just give me one more reason I neeeeed this).

So you're probably wondering what this has to do with social media. Adobe Kuler also offers a lot of community resources for graphic artists and designers. Kuler gives users the ability to save, share, tag and comment on color combinations (Spicy Chicken anyone?) which creates a whole community just around design. Users can favorite and follow specific users if they find their color soul mate (hello, Blue Crush are we MFEO?). You can import photos from Flickr to help you pick colors and there are even forums where designers can share their creations.

By integrating social tools into their free product, Adobe has created a community for their users and fans who are passionate about design. Now that's a smart social media strategy.