Hello everyone and Happy Monday! Its Nina-Marie with you today, sharing the latest installment of my Studio Monday series. This week I wanted to share tips for creating with mood/color boards. I’ll also be featuring some newer products from Hero Arts.

Mood boards, or also known as color boards, are a collection of images that share a common color scheme. You could also use a mood board for a collection of images that share a similar style, theme or subject. I personally love them for color combos. When I decided to use the Destination Paris wood block stamp with the Postage Stamp dies on these cards, I headed over to Pinterest to see what kind of color schemes I wanted to use.

I started my search by looking up “Paris, France”. Because the stamp I was used in these cards is depicting this particular location, I felt it was a natural place to begin. Looking through the vast array of options in my search results, I focused on finding three images that REALLY caught my eye. Here’s a look at the three color boards I created for these cards:

Once I had decided upon the three main images, I then searched for other images that shared the same predominant colors. For example, let’s look at the photo of the Eiffel Tower in the rain. The primary colors in the image are red and gray. By searching Pinterest for “red and gray”, I was able to discover other images with the same shared color palettes.

Now, the idea of searching for additional images may seem pointless.  I already had my color combos picked out by the initial image search I had done, so why choose more? Because selecting a few additional photos for my boards is SO handy! They might help me draw inspiration for a certain texture, accent, theme or feel. I also save these boards for future use, so having the additional photos included in the board provides further inspiration.

In the video, I will be sharing how I created the partial die cut card-front using the Postage Stamp dies from Hero Arts. These dies are SO versatile. If you follow me often, you’ll have noticed how much I have been using them lately. I love that I am getting so much use out of these particular dies.

One of the things that I love about the Destination Paris stamp is the clean, graphic style of it. I wanted to make sure I carried that same feel into my finished cards, so you’ll notice the “minimalist” appearance. This is actually quite trendy these days! By utilizing clean lines, flat color and some hand drawn elements, I was able to let the modern feel of the stamp shine beautifully.

I am particularly fond of the pink and gray color scheme. The pop of gold also accents those two colors nicely!

Another thing I wanted to point out: This card design is perfect for those of you that are not into coloring as much as other crafters. I personally would -and will!- color almost anything I lay my hands on. But its fun to break out of the norm every so often and do something a bit outside of your usual style.

If I had skipped adding some color with my Copics and simply used the stamped image as-is, it still would have looked amazing. Had I done so, I would have still added the additional hand drawn details with the gold, silver and black gel pens. You can see those details in the finished cards.

Be sure to check out the video below to see how I put these cards together! You’ll also learn a bit more about working with mood/color boards. I will be talking about that in the beginning of the video and I hope it is of help to you! I love referencing things such as color boards when I am in a creative rut. I never know what kind of spark it will ignite by seeing something totally unrelated to papercrafting!

Thanks for stopping by and spending a bit of your Monday with me… I will be back again next week with another Studio Monday video for you!

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