How much do you deviate from your swatches/palettes?

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How much do you deviate from your swatches/palettes?

I see a lot of swatches (or palettes) for design and scrapbooking floating around (especially for blog trains) and usually they are 6-8 colours. So, I have a few questions for those of you who make your own papers and embellishments and whatnot:

- do you deviate from the swatch at all... is it even "ok" to branch out or deviate from the swatch? And by deviation, I mean, instead of using JUST, say, the one shade of green in a swatch, do you use lighter or darker versions of it, too? Even if they're not part of the original swatch? Or what about throwing in an extra complimenting or contrasting colour?

or... do you just consider the swatch to be a "jumping off" point?

- if you DO branch out or deviate, what do you do and how far do you go? At what point does a kit lose cohesion and become a design mess?

- if you do NOT branch out or deviate, why? Is there some reason why someone should not?

These are things I am considering as I start to work on some scrapbooking "supplies", and I wondered how everyone else did it. smiley Thanks in advance for the input!!

I usually stay within the colour swatch for blog trains just because I want my part of the kit to match what the other designers are doing. Sometimes you will end up with a slightly different shade depending on what treatment you doing to your element, but I don't worry about that too much unless its way off, but I don't add any different colours to the mix. If I want to use additional colours that aren't in the original colour scheme, I'll make a complementary "add on" so that people picking it up know that it goes with the original kit, but is different too (if that makes sense).

I usually just use the colors from the palette. Every once in a while I might use a lighter shade for a small part.

I typically stick to the palette no matter what it's for smiley

I usually stay with the colors in the selected palette except to add white and black. They are usually just used for stitching or making stickers.

I try to stick to the palette, but sometimes elements just look weird in the colors provided. For instance; I tried every blue and greenish color in the Pond Life palette on my duck, but it all looked strange, so I decided to add yellow at that point. I did not use yellow in the papers though, just some elements.

I stick to the palette, too, but find that there's usually some deviation once you start playing with and apply different effects. you know, overlay reacts one way and multiply acts a complete different way! But either way, it's still the same color!

I do deviate "a little":) Or I guess I should say, when making some things, it just looks so much better contrast wise, to make somethings a little lighter, or a little darker, but not much. So Its the same color, just lighter or darker. I just feel like it really helps some things stand out, rather than blending in with the rest.

When participating in a blog train or collab I will stay pretty closely with the palette. As Melouise said there could be "theme" items that you just cannot be as strict with. The only other time I might use a non-palette color is when it is a 5 swatch palette and I have six layers (including the background) in the patterned paper design or in an element. In those cases what I do is add the swatch color and then go to image>adjust brightness/contrast and use the slider button. Then you are basically in the color palette but a lighter/darker "version" of the swatch color. It blends well and yet doesn't detract from the palette.

I always stick to the palette, though I might occasionally use a lighter or darker shade.

This might be vearing from you question...ie not specifically adding colors...but thought id share how i get my textured colors.

I've done a few blog trains. Since I create with GIMP, sometimes using overlay, with the solid color underneath, just doesn't look good. So I'll use the colorfiy tool. To match the color I start with that colors hex number but use a mask exposing a square of the true color in another layer. Then as I tweak contrast or hue what ever seems to give the same middle value, is usually how I set things.

I've not yet played with plaids, so I guess that should be my next challenge!

Seems like I've tint a few "real-life" extracted items, and if I do, I'd again use a mask to be able to see the target color. Most times to the middle or darknside but making sure you dont get anything weird happening in the element. Sometimes I've just selected certain colors within to set to the pallette.

I deviate rather a lot sometimes when designing for blog trains. (I think my contribution to the most recent train is the biggest deviation, which is pretty funny since I proposed the original palette!) I start adding texture and painting with brushes that are semi-opaque and the next thing I know I have all these nice soft muted colors that are *like* the original colors but very much *not* the original colors. Honestly I'm just not savvy enough to get the texture and layering I crave while still bringing it back to the proper palette colors. Laura, I've read through your comment several times since I think that's what you're describing doing, but I still don't get it!

I start by making 12 x 12 papers in the colour palette, but as soon as I start with any kind of layers I seem to lose the original colour. I have no idea how to get them back to the original colour. I mess around with hue/saturation and colour variations (PSE) some times it works! I think it does matter to stay with the original colours, but sometimes I just can't help it:(