Playing with Pantone's spring palette

Ok, before anything else, I must point out that the mess above wasn't made with the intent of ever publishing it online. It looks chaotic and it's hard to separate one colour mix from the other, but I hope you will show forgiveness considering it wasn't made to be seen by anyone but myself. So that was that out of the way, now we can continue, starting from the beginning

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I was just reading Brandi Hussey's blog post Pantone's Spring 2014 Colors, which prompted me to also play around with the trend colour palette and see what colour combos I could find and be inspired to use.

As I mentioned in a comment to her post, I agree that the palette for the coming spring season doesn't really have a huge wow factor. Some complain there's too many pastels, but with my love of nature, antiques and romantic styles, it's ok I think. The light blue is boring, but on the other hand it can be useful mixing with other, more interesting, colours. And at first, I wasn't over the moon about Radiant Orchid being the colour of the year 2014, but I think it looks very nice is smaller portions -- such as beads! -- than when first seeing the big blocks of colours Pantone put up on their website and on Pinterest.

All in all, I like that there's two purples -- warm, pinkish Radiant Orchid and cool, bluish Violet Tulip -- even if I wish we got the Magenta Purple from the men's palette too (think Swarovski's Blackberry pearl and you can picture magenta purple). Cayenne was the colour that surprised me the most as I fell for it instantly. Love it, really. Judging from the image above, Cayenne and Violet Tulip seems to be my two favourites. And an icy green is never wrong, either on it's own or to enhance a cool purple or add a pinch of foggy colour to a light grey.

There's two blues too. It was just when starting to write this I realised my total neglect of Dazzling Blue when playing with the palette. No wonder, really, seeing how blue isn't my favorite colour. Even if I'm attracted to some blues (e.g. dark indigo, foggy grey-blues) and find that many blues are great for enhancing my beloved purples, roses and greens, this particular blue felt uninspiring. But let's see. Let's actually use that too:

That's better, it needed to be included. And while I might not like to use all of these above, it does show off the colour as a useful one despite my scepticism. As you can see, I'm reluctant to mix blue and orange. That's a very strong mix of colour (and one both my almae matres -- Lunda university and Mälardalen university collage -- used). Too much for me.

Still, the two most bright colours in the palette, Dazzling Blue and Freesia, are the ones that inspire me the least. At least the bland Sand and Paloma (light grey) are useful neutrals and the low key pastels like Placid Blue and Hemlock have a nice, soft calmness that can be a nice addition in some designs.

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By the way, I mentioned the men's palette. Below is a comparison between the women's (the palette you'll see most of online) and the men's palette. The women's palette is the top one.

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See what I mean about Magenta Purple and Blackberry? They guys' violet is called Violet Haze and called "a deeper, stronger version of Violet Tulip" -- and Magenta Purple is called "a more robust version of Radiant Orchid". Well, hopefully we gals will get a deeper, darker purple too in autumn if Swarovski is any indication.

Anyway, my favourite colour combo from the trend report would actually be Radiant Orchid and Magenta Purple.

Told you I love purple the most...