Have you ever noticed the tremendous impact that color itself can have on your scrapbook pages? Color can make a page have a "mood." A brightly colored page may look happy. A page done in pastel colors could remind you of a baby. Or, putting dark colors on a page could make it look too dreary for the pictures.

Colors have their own personalities and strengths. In consideration of these personalities and strengths, colors of paper and embellishments used on your scrapbook pages can either complement or compete with those photos of your precious memories. Colors can also complement or compete with the other colors on the page!

Knowing how to choose and use color on your scrapbook pages just might be the most fundamental resource to successful scrapbooking. Fortunately, once you know the "rules" of color, it isn’t very hard.

In this article, we will discuss the basics of color, the color wheel, and terminology of color. These are important to understand because your scrapbook pages are made using dyes and pigment colors, and colors give consistent results when mixed. These consistent results will also be applicable to layers of vellum, if of appropriate thickness; as well as paints, chalks, and other coloring media that can be mixed. The basics of how colors work will give you a solid foundation of familiarity for learning the "rules" of color. The color wheel helps us understand how all the pieces fit together, and the terminology gives us even more competency in the variations of colors.

1. The Color Wheel

The color wheel is like a rainbow that has been made into a circle to show how all the colors work together and are made from each other. Small color wheels are quite inexpensive, so if you don’t have one, I highly recommend getting one! This is a valuable asset to learning and understanding the nuances of color. My favorite is the Pocket Color Wheel, available online and at craft stores (check the painting section).

2. The Colors

With pigments and paints, there are six "basic" colors. The first three are the Primary Colors. You may like to think of these as the "original colors." The Primaries are Red, Yellow, and Blue. They are the original Primary Colors because you cannot mix other colors to get the Primaries. You musthave Red paint to get Red. You cannot make Red from any of the other colors. The same goes for Yellow and Blue. Additionally, Red, Yellow and Blue are the foundational colors from which all other colors are mixed.

The color wheel shows how all the other colors are made from the Primary colors.

When you combine the Primary Colors of Red, Yellow and Blue, you can make new colors called the Secondary Colors. These are completely new colors, so they have totally new names. The Secondary Colors are Orange, Green, and Violet.

If you take a Secondary color and mix it with a Primary, you get a Tertiary Color. The names of these colors are: Red-Violet, Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green,and Blue-Violet.

You will notice that the names of the Tertiary colors are the names of the Primary and Secondary colors that were mixed to make them, always beginning with the name of the Primary Color and ending with the name of the Secondary Color.

These are all the basic colors. You can make variations of these colors, but from here there are no new colors on the color wheel.

3. Neutral Colors and Color Variation Terminology

The Neutral Colors are Black, White and Gray. They are not on the color wheel because they are neutral and independent from the Primary Colors. Neutral Colors coordinate with all colors. Neutral Colors do not "clash" with any colors. Neutral Colors also do not "make" any "new" colors by mixing them together. Neutral Colors do produce variations of existing colors.

By adding White to a color, you make a tint. Pink is a tint of Red. "Pastel Colors" are very light tints of a color.

By adding Black to a color, you make a shade. This is how you get "Dark Red."

By adding Gray to a color, you make a tone.

If you are actually mixing colors, it is useful to know the technical names for these varieties of color. The layman, however, generally calls the different variations of a color "shades." That is just fine, as it can be confusing to remember actual terms!

These are the basic fundamentals to color. All colors are made from the Primary colors of Red, Yellow and Blue. The colors made are the Secondary Colors (which have new names) and Tertiary Colors (which have combination names). Black, White and Gray and Neutral Colors and do not appear on the color wheel. They are independent from the actual colors, but they do give variety to the colors already made.

In "The Impact of Color: Color Personalities" we will discuss the classifications of these colors and the "moods" they can give to your pages.

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