Scrapbooking with the Color Purple

About Purple   |   Purple Dominating   |   Purple Drawing the Eye   |   Purple Guiding the Eye   |   Purple Accenting

About the Color Purple

Color conveys meanings or evokes feelings in three chief ways. See the resulting associations with purple for each trigger.

1. PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE: Purple stimulates the areas of the brain that do problem solving.

2. IN NATURE (associations to occurrences of colors in nature): Find purple in nature in blossoms. But, really, purple doesn’t occur as much as other colors in nature and can, thus, seem artificial if used too much.

3. PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMBOLISM (associations with the viewer’s own psychological symbolism):*

• Western: royalty, military honor, high ranking positions of authority
• Eastern: wealth
• India: sorrow and comforting
• Japan: privilege and wealth
• Thailand: color of mourning for widows
• Brazil: death and mourning

* SOURCE: Cutural Color

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Purple Dominating

Amy Kingsford used purple to set the mood on “Magical Ending.” She says, “I chose a dark purple background, which I’ll admit was a little scary for me at first, but it created the perfect ‘night-time feel’ once paired with some of the themed embellishments.  I’ve paired my purple with a few splashes of pale yellow–purple’s complement on the color wheel, which I’ve used to add highlights to this otherwise dark page.”

Michelle Houghton used a split comlimentary color sceme on “Family” with purple providing a bold backdrop for her photo.

Michelle says, “My family tries to gather all together every two years, and my brother designs t-shirts for us all to wear on our big outing.  This past summer our t-shirts were dark green and our photo was taken in front of green foliage.  Purple goes wonderfully with green and really makes it pop so I decided to use a large block of purple behind my photograph.  I layed a layer of green behind the purple to create a boarder and then added texture to the top of the purple with green mesh and spray mist.  Leather and jewels add small touches of orange to the layout to complete a split comlimentary color sceme.  The small touches of orange help draw the eye around the layout.

Terry Billman‘s granddaughter was a flower girl in a recent wedding. Terry says, “She looked so precious I wanted something simple to not take away from the beauty of the photo. In order to keep it simple, I chose a monochromatic theme based on purple, the color of her sash. The photo pops against the light shade of purple and the dark purple mat sets off the inner canvas well.”

Purple Drawing the Eye

The photos of purple yarn in Sue Althouse‘s “Summer Project” immediately draw the viewer’s eye because of their contrast with the rest of the page. A darker and more subdued purple title draws the eye next.

Sue says, “My recent purchase of 13 balls of purple yarn for a big knitting project was the perfect subject for this layout. I chose an analogous color scheme of red-purple, purple, blue-purple, blue and blue-green. The calming colors remind me how relaxing an evening of knitting can be. I need that, because I have a whole summer of knitting ahead to complete my cardigan!”

Tara McKernin says, “This page includes purple in a complimentary color scheme.  I took my photos and played the purple off of them and used yellow accents to highlight the layout making it pop.  You can use a color wheel to pick your complementary colour if you are unsure of what would work best.”

The splotches of purple behind the focal point photo on Kiki Kougioumtzi‘s “She is an Artist” draw the eye and emphasize the most important part of the page.

Kiki says, “I pulled the color scheme from the photos and used color scheme designer to come up with it. This is a tetradic scheme with the purple as the dominant color. I chose this as the dominant because all the other colors of the scheme exist in the photos in big amounts. The muted purple represents all the mess that was made during my daughter’s drawing.”

Purple Guiding the Eye

Tanyia Deskins used a deep rich shade of purple along with black, grey, white, and blue to add the sense drama that she loves. The pops of purple stand out creating diagonal flow starting at the top left corner and moving down to the photo. Tayia says, “The contrast of the purple goes well with the extra contrast in the black and white photo.”

Adryane Driscoll says, “These are some not-so-clear photos from a trip to Crab Cove. I used the purple in the jacket as the main color on the page, adding subtle misting at top left and bottom right to create a downward diagonal flow on the page. I did something a little different to get the effect on the smaller photos. I used digital frames which had rectangles to which I was supposed to clip the photos. Instead, I removed that layer and put the photos in the frame BEHIND the drop shadow layers.”

 

Purple Accenting

Dina Wakley says, “‘Cute Gals’ started as a piece of kraft cardstock with a stenciled pattern. Next I added the large tag and bits of printed tissue. Then came the strip of hearts. I scribbled on the tag with a pencil, and then added a bit of torn cardboard and a purple flower. I added the photos and title last.”

Paula Gilarde was going for an elegant feel to this page about her daughter’s first communion, and thus used script fonts and a pale background and delicate digital brushes. The dimension and purple color of the butterflies add a great accent to the page.

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