Have you ever pictured something in your mind but had trouble conveying that to someone else? I can usually sketch my way out of that kind of situation but when it comes to color, it’s a bit trickier!
I had an idea last summer for a jewelry collection that featured red enameling over metal. I sketched out shapes and planned my designs but inside my head, I could see exactly the red that it had to be, the perfect red (for me!).
To my husband, red is, well, RED! I am not sure if he can actually see subtle variations in the hue. It’s like trying to find that perfect shade of lipstick when you know only one shade will do. There are probably 10,000 different red/coral/pink shades to choose from and you know what that’s like: too red, too orangy, too bluish, too pink, not red enough, and the list goes on. And thus was my search for that perfect red enamel color for my jewelry collection that was so far only available inside my head.
As an added complication, the fellow who would be doing the enameling for me is located only a few miles from my Florida home but about 800 miles from my summer home in Virginia. I tried to explain in words what I was looking for: a bright red, leaning towards an orangey red, and definitely not a bluish red. He sent me three color samples on metal and my husband’s reaction was that they were all the same! Yeah, I don’t think he can see the fine differences in hue. But none of them were right, not even close. Well, close sort of but I couldn’t settle for sort of…
As I pondered the question of how to show my enamellist the exact color I wanted, forget using digital colors as monitors don’t show them all in the same way and he wasn’t familiar with the RGB hex codes, I hit on an idea and headed to my local hardware store. I selected a range of paint chips in various shades of red. I felt fairly certain that one of them could be “it”!
As I pulled out of the parking lot with a cheerfulness in my heart, I noticed a guy walking to his vehicle and had to slow down so as not to run him over. When I glanced at his vehicle, I whipped my car over and pulled up next to him and vaulted out the door. He was just climbing into his beautiful, shiny Ford pickup truck that was the PERFECT RED!
“Oh my gosh, your truck is beautiful! What color IS this???”
“Ah, red?”
“I mean, is there a name or color number or something for this color?”
The guy was as thrilled with the truck color as I was and told me a story that concluded with him buying the truck primarily for the color. I explained why I wanted to share that exact color with someone and he search his vehicle handbook, looked under the hood, inside doors, but could not find the color code. Dang! But then he suggested I “ride down the road” to the Ford dealership and see what they have. Yes!
So, the end of this story is that indeed there was a brochure with some big color chips which I mailed that morning to my enamellist. And that is how the color of my collection, “Rosso, Rojo, Red” was born!
To celebrate that perfect red, that collection is discounted an afFORDable 25% through July 15.
USE CODE "RED" AT CHECKOUT
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