Colour Me Pastel

There is a cork board I hung in the hall of my home, where I pin up random things I come across pretty much anywhere because I find them beatiful-funny-weird-old or worth looking at for the second time. One could call it an inspiration board or a mood board. You can see more of them here and here. This one was inspired by my trip to Venice and by pastel colours, which seem to be everywhere this spring!


Image by Olga


Colour Theory aside - there are amazingly many beautiful words and expressions for color in English (blush pink, see green, sky blue, canary yellow...) - and I'm very sure this would apply to any other language.. I like them so much I even made a small list of 'color words' and I want to keep 'collecting' them. How do you like dove gray, emerald green, poppy red and peacock blue? Other color words (and colors!) I'm fascinated with at the moment are powder blue and mustard yellow... I think I also came across 'vintagey peach' the other day.. What words for color come to your mind when you read this? Maybe some really great names haven't been even invented yet :)

6 comments:

Cape Cod Rambling Rose said...

What a lovely inspiration board! I love when colors are given fancy names, too! "Fire engine red" is a common name here for a bright shiny red; cornflower blue (I love this one); robin's egg blue. =)

Paralelo Longe said...

Hello dear Olga,
Definitely you are bringing a very cozy environment to your blog. Did you know that Portugal is the biggest producer of cork in the world? If you ever come to Portugal (and I’m sure you will !! very soon!) we ‘ll go to the huge farms in the south/center where there are thousands of cork oaks, and you will see cork on its natural state - as the bark of the tree. It takes about 7 to 8 years to grow up this bark and then it’s cut and prepared in factories. It’s an interesting process. About those lovely names: we have some in Portugal that I’ll try to translate: green bottle (for the dark green), sunny yellow, chock pink, sky blue, brown earth, grape red. I believe these are the most popular. A big hug, TI

Floss said...

What a lovely board! I think that the boys and I like the colour name 'aquamarine' best, because it sums up the blue of the sea in both elements of its name!

Cape Cod Rambling Rose said...

Thank you for trying, Olga! I am sure one day my family will figure it out. I just have to decipher those old maps! =)

Olga said...

Hi Louise, I really like fire engine red! (sounds very pop-art to me!) thank you for cornflower blue as well - I now know that this flower - so popular in my country, which grows everywhere at my grandma's summer house is called 'cornflower' in English!

TI, thank you for the wonderful story about cork production - I didn't know Portugal was the biggest producer! I'm very curious about the subject because it seems that nowadays more and more wine producers make artificial corks or use a screwing up tap...maybe it is because of cork tree protection..but who knows..The colours are really beautiful - bottle green and chock pink are my favourites and I'm really curious how they sound like in Portuguese..

Floss, thank you! I also like aquamarine, it used to be one of my favourite colors since childhood :)

Olga said...

Some more colours to add to the list:
creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron yellow and butter yellow. Yummy!