When I started a new knitting project I knew better than to ask my knitting friends what colour they suggested I use … it was always purple. In fact the first two handmade baby items I received were purple. I’ve been told, more times than I can count, that “Knitters love purple!” There seems to be some truth to that statement - at least in the area I live!

So it was with some surprise that I read that “purple is normally a colour scrapbookers avoid” in a magazine a few months ago. Really? They avoid purple? I looked at the RAKScraps gallery and did a search through about 100 posted layouts. While there wasn’t a lot of purple, there were a number of pages that had either purple in the background or as an element on them. Purple wasn’t the most popular colour [blue and pink were], but it was well represented.

That got me thinking about my own pages and “colour avoidance.” For a RAKScraps Challenge, many months ago, there was a challenge to scrap about a colour you didn’t like. I did a page on Chartreuse - a page that still makes me wince due to the overwhelming chartreuse colour. I cannot say that I’ve ever gone out of my way to use that colour again, though a number of my pages have yellow or green elements on them.

Do you find yourself avoiding a particular colour? If you’d like to use it more [or challenge yourself to use it in a layout], here are some suggestions:

• use it as a supporting colour - such as a small brad or thin ribbon on a page
• find an advertisement using that colour and mimic the advertisement
• find a colour palette including that colour and use those colours for your layout
• if it’s a general colour [such as “purple”], play with different shades of the colour [lilac, plum, eggplant] until you find one that works with the layout
• find a patterned paper with the colour in it; you need not use the paper as the background, but could use it for a title, photo corner, photo mat, or journaling area

Colours are fun and while you may find yourself using the same colours again and again, going outside your comfort zone and using other colours can also be fun. Challenge yourself!

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