July, August, Sept Blog Trains

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July, August, Sept Blog Trains

Share your ideas for themes and colors for the upcoming blog trains in July, August & September.

I would love to see a 1950's theme.

Poodle skirts, saddle shoes, jukeboxes, malt shops, ponytails, bebop rock and roll... all that fun stuff !

Pastels were very popular, but so was bright red and aqua with black and white (typical malt shop furniture colours with black and white checkerboard floors).

Here's a bit of an idea for the colours that were popular in the 1950's:

I'd love for Iconic (with that palette) from the last poll to be one of the months.

I also love the idea (from the last suggestion thread) of a very general travel theme (flying, road trips, trains, even local touristing & staycations). I know PS has lots of travel items but it's one of the few themes I can always use more of!

And I also love Robyn's suggestion (also from the last suggestion thread) of City Lights, which could be architecture, travel to cities (NYC, SF, Europe), all sorts of variations.

And I am really bad at coming up with colors so I'll leave palette ideas to those more talented in that regard!

My daughter would like Vivid, metalic (silver?), and or gems. Hmmmmm....

I would like to see a theme with construction & tools. Many themes are more feminine oriented like our upcoming Flower Power, and recent themes like A Mug and a Book or the generic themes of Treasured, Love Knows No Borders. It seems very rarely do we do a theme more guy/boy oriented. And I still really LOVE a theme suggestion we had of "Roar". I really think that could be so much fun and open to a wide interpretation. I'll put together a palette for the construction/tools theme, and re-post the palette for Roar.

And as far as the construction/tool theme goes I'll include a couple of pinks because I've seen (and I have) tools that are pink so it doesn't necessarily have to be just masculine colors.

Another possible theme could be "Endangered". Everyone could decide their own sub-theme like rainforest, wildlife, prairie (native grasses), etc. A palette could include bright colors for the rainforest, more neutral colors for the prairie, and wildlife could pull colors from both.

I would love a Western or Country wedding! Here is my palette idea (I added a coral/orange color):

Dawn, you said you would like to see a theme with construction & tools or a more guy/boy oriented kit... so am I!

I have some ideas:

-Pirate
-Robot (could be construction-oriented)

Maybe someone will agree and have palette ideas for these!

Love the Pirate & Robot idea, Sonia!

A couple of basic palettes for a theme - Construction Zone or Under Construction. Primary colors with an added pink (for girls) and of course a brown, tan and gray.

for bold colors

for brighter colors

or

pull the two pinks from this?

On Sonia, I like the pirate or robot theme, too. Oh my, decisions, decisions.

smiley

I would like to suggest a Western theme, why not wedding. Love everyone's colors.

I like all the themes you've mentioned:

Robots
Construction
Pirate
Iconic
50's
Country Wedding
Roar
City of Lights
Vivid
Gem

I know a lot of us have little ones at home or as grandchildren, and creating art around those ages is awesome.
But having only a husband and an almost-adult teen son, sometimes I really wish there was more out there for ADULT elements, especially of the male variety.

I think it would be cool to use ANY of the theme ideas from an adult MALE perspective!
Even Country Wedding, Iconic, 50's, etc.

What do you all think?

I agree with Lisel- I would love something for male adults- but not tools and construction... my husband's name might be Andy, but he sure isn't handy lol!

I LOVE the pirate theme!

My addition to the idea list would be something that could work with Renaissance Faires- Medieval Times? We go every year and I have tons of photos I'd love to use a kit like that for.

Jumping off the 50s theme- maybe we do "Decades" and everyone picks their favorite decade?

I still love the ROAR idea from the last poll.

And, as usual, I am still aching to do a monochromatic palette for something (but probably not for any of the ideas lol!).

We rarely do palettes with a darker/bolder feel because I have an aversion to those colors smiley You can download my palette template here if you want to make up your own palettes. That may help us get a bigger variety. Also, I can totally re-add those older palettes.

I love the retro idea and the robot idea. In fact, I like retro robots smiley

I know we are suppose to only suggest one theme and palette and I've already posted the construction theme and palette, but if it's okay I'm going to post a second theme and palette. I suggested it in my previous post and the more I thought about it the more compelled I felt. The theme is "Endangered". I looked online and there are so many animals, butterflies, foliage, etc. that are endangered. I'm not one to usually champion a cause, but here I am doing just that. This theme is so open since designers can choose either just one animal, butterfly, etc. or they can be more general. Anyway here is the palette

@ Laurel, I like your suggestion of "Decades" as opposed to "50's". That gives designers more leeway in choosing what to do. 50's with the poodle skirts and jukeboxes, 60's with tie dye and flowers, etc. Anyway great suggestion!

A little food for thought:

In my opinion, I don't think it's a good idea to do a "decades" thing because each decade is very different from the next with regards to colour palettes and designs. Sticking with one decade for each blog train will make for a more cohesive package for people to play with.

Keep in mind that we do blog trains each month, so doing different decades in separate blog trains will expand our offerings throughout the year if we find ourselves struggling for ideas from one month to the next.

We could do a 50's one, and then some other month do a hippy 60's one, and then some other month do a disco 70's one, and then some other month do a roaring 20's one, etc etc.

Just my $.02 worth.

And I agree with everyone else... we need to do more kits for the men in our lives !

Fishing, car racing, robots/sci-fi, dinosaurs, pirates, various sports... all great ideas. I think "handy man" stuff has been done a gazillion times, there's a ton of kits out there with that theme already.

I agree because of the colors that are rather different for each decade; I'd find it challenging to find one swatch to include more than one decade (which is already hard IMO), and the train could lack cohesion as a result.

50 retro robots sound way sweet to me.

I love the retro robots idea but I just spotted Di Hiller's June kit with a rocket in it & thought making it a retro science fictiony kit (or even just retro science kit) might be fun - Rockets & Robots. The golden age of SF had so many incredible images & the cover art & themes were amazing (can you tell I'm a huge SF geek?!). Or, you could go with an early NASA theme (race to the moon) or a Jetson's/Johnny Quest or mutant monster movies style kit or any permutation of rockets &/or robots you can think of.

And this would work as a guys kit, too - I know a lot of boys & men who love SF & old mutant monster movies (women, too, me being one of them, but since the need for more kits that work for men was mentioned upthread, I thought I'd mention them specifically).

I would love to see a Cowboy-Western theme... I sometimes have a hard time finding this theme when looking for graphics. Especially Cowboy Birthday... nearly impossible to find for adult birthday's.... just throwing out the idea smiley I like all the ideas so far.

I am totally a retro girl.......so I love anything retro.

I've pulled the main colors from the palettes in my post #9 and added grays and browns. "Nuts & Bolts" can accommodate construction, robot, rockets, etc.

Designers can use mainly primary colors if they want to gear toward boys, or mainly the neutrals if they want to gear more toward men.

Absolutely! smiley And what a way to finally play with all those retro half toners ....

Quote:
The golden age of SF had so many incredible images & the cover art & themes were amazing
yes smiley smiley so are the tools. Sounds like fun on many levels....

I like the retro robot space story, Midcentury SF.

What a lovely selection of ideas and palettes!
I would like to suggest a theme of "Summer Fair" or "Summer Fete", but cannot come up with a palette.

Hi 50s is my pick,Joyce

Looks like we lost the poll for these months, but I have the palettes ready to go. I"ll re-post them soon!

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