Colour inspiration

On Saturday morning we went to our local garden centre for breakfast. Our 'new' Dobbies has been here for nearly a year and they do an excellent deal of 2 breakfasts for £5.95 so, every now and again, we treat ourselves!

Anyhow, during the recent Blog Week (Colour Lovers, 3KCBWDAY1) I mentioned that garden centres were always a good source of inspiration for colour. I only had my phone with me in Dobbies on Saturday (hence the low picture quality) but there were so many opportunities to find different colourways that I captured a few pics and thought I would use them to show you how easy it is to find some wonderful combinations, and therefore just how useful and inspirational the garden centre can be!!!!

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Underneath each image you will see a palette of up to seven colours, all of which have come from the picture.

The first picture shows a wall on the outside entrance to the garden centre. The plants grow vertically and the whole effect is like a big living tapestry of elephants ears, heuchera, thrift and ferns. I love it and wish I could have something like this on a wall in my own garden.

These garden ornaments are colourful enough in themselves but what I was really looking at were the irridescent pastel shades in the dragonfly wings.

The beautiful deep cerise and magenta in the large metal poppies, combined with accents from the surrounding items will give you some very striking colours.

I loved these ceramic birdhouses. Their simple colours make an ideal 'calming' palette to work with - almost 'seasidey'.

Look at the hot colours of these crinkly metal mushrooms with lots of different shades in each. It would be so easy to overdo the palette choice here so I just stuck to the deeper tones.

Shiny ceramic globes with a very Morroccan palette - here I have mostly chosen the mid tones.

Aren't these violas so delicate and beautiful? I can easily imagine a granny square blanket in alternating colours chosen from this palette.

I had actually photographed this metal gazebo from underneath because of the pattern but in fact there is an interesting colourway here too with several different greys - a good set of 'cool' and masculine colours possibly?

The simplicity of seed packets in a display stand. What better way to capture lots of earthy garden vegetable colours in one go! Soup colours too, unsurprisingly!

This distressed look of this clock really caught my eye and it was quite easy to find six colours within it that went really well together, even though two of them were shades of brown.

The muted colours and red highlight used on these coathooks were what initially made me decide to do this Colour Inspiration post. I do love those sagey and olivey greens.

Now for a bit of zing with some sherbet colours. The addition of the pale blue and the grey stop the overall effect from being too overpowering.

Finally, some deeper jewel shades that still  have a bit of a kick.

I hope that looking at these pictures and the various colour choices will give you some ideas for your own Colour Inspiration.

If you have a picture that you would like to use the colours from but feel you might need some help, please don't hesitate to get in touch and I will do my best to show you how to discover your own 'palettes'.