Life without red is just beige

If one had to choose a limited color palette to live with ...and only with these colors for the rest of days....and all 120 Crayolas except for those spared, for some reason, disappeared....my bare minimums are listed below*, give or take.

My heartfelt choice contains 51 Crayolas and I've done with lots less, believe me; and yeah, I know, heavy on the redder tones...that's just how I see things. Life without red is just beige.

photo credit: by parl

I'd decided that tidbit by the time I was two. I insisted on a red bedroom...which I created rather tastefully a few years later, thank you very much, with a pretty red country wall paper with white trim and pine furnishings (this was way back in 1950's folks - knotty pine was a mid brow decorating phenomenon in the I like Ike-we-thought-we-were-Happy Days). Give this kid a Good Housekeeping Seal for past accomplishments please.

And yes, I did select the wall paper (and lived with it happily until I went off to college.) I was an ambitious color-wise child, although dad and mom did the actual room papering and painting labor.  My dad even made the head board for my bed with a bookcase above my pillows which he faced in red Pleather with large headed brass tacks of the kind you'd see on old leather chairs.  It was still in good shape when the house changed hands in 2003.  Sturdy.

Thus I began - following a successful formula for eventual and potential creative directors; make the decisions, find warm bodies to execute, wallow in the accolades?  Well, I'm a bit more hands on these days but hey - necessity makes for odd compromises. 

Where, I ask you, would life be without Denim? 

This is a Crayola color - people.  Well, it also shareware that categorizes itself as an informal tool for early stage web sites...but I empathize naturally (sad attempt at a cotton pun) with the color's progenitor as a true blue American bell bottomed denim clad woman of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s (mixing metaphors and a lame simile in that last bit, sorry).  But in proof:

This is the back of my head in 1967, as editor-in-chief of Specula, the SUNY at Stony Brook college yearbook; obviously a card carrying denim clad female.  Actually, in retrospect, I believe I was wearing a mod flower print pant with a brown turtleneck because Levi's (the denim of choice of the period) were still being made mostly for men and fit poorly if you had hips.  But you get the drift.  It's a color and fit thing.

And...but, but...in all discussions of Crayolas....one can not forget to talk about the taste of a good crayon can one? Yum.

My last breath must be one filled with color, and a thousand harmonies (bird, Mozart, Beetles whichever). If it has to be just 51 colors, so be it.

S.

My selected Crayola colors have pretty tasty names! Just imagine their actual colors, if you can. Those below are simple RGB blog edits and have little, except inspiration - mine - to do with true Crayola colors. If you are imgination challenged - follow the link to the colour lovers blog where you'll see the Crayola "True Colors" (thank you Cyndi Lauper) and learn neat things like 6 billion Crayolas are made a year which is enough to circle the Earth six times in color.....ah, that's coloricious, isn't it? Yum, Yum.

*51 Crayola crayon names

(my bare minimums)

Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown

Bittersweet

Mango Tango

Tumbleweed

Beaver

Neon Carrot

Goldenrod

Dandelion

Inch Worm

Asparagus

Granny Smith Apple

Mountain Meadow

Shamrock

Tropical Rain Forest

Robin Egg Blue

Sky Blue

Outer Space

Pacific Blue

Cornflower

Midnight Blue (if you can see this one....you have brilliant eye sight; it's Midnight Blue)

Denim

Periwinkle

Indigo (this says Indigo for the color disadvantaged)

Wild Blue Yonder

Manatee

Blue Bell

Blue Violet

Purple Mountains' Majesty

Wisteria

Fuchsia

Plum

Razzle Dazzle Rose

Orchid

Eggplant

Wild Strawberry

Cotton Candy

Razzmatazz

Piggy Pink

Jazzberry Jam

Tickle Me Pink

Red

Mauvelous

Wild Watermelon

Scarlet

Salmon

Brick Red

White

Timberwolf

Silver

Gray

Black (Black is all around us, just not here)

Think you can you eat just one?

Someone way smarter than me commented, "if you are wondering about the taste of crayons, you'd better still be in kindergarten."  That's a bit harsh.  enjoy!