Halloween Color to Die For

    If you want to make holiday cookies that have big impact but are still simple to make I have a great trick for you!  Let the color do the heavy lifting.   It's true, the easiest way to add interest to basic cookies is with unexpected color.   

    Our minds tend to gloss over things that are expected so color that is unusual will draw attention. There are many different ways you could go about choosing a fresh color scheme for your holiday cookies but for this post I want to do a little introduction on how to use the color wheel to choose colors based on their relationship to each other.  I hope to do more posts like this in the future so I'll ease into this and keep it brief.

      The locations of the traditional Halloween colors of orange, green and purple on the color wheel form what is called a triad in color theory.  A triad is three colors that are equally spaced from one another.  Black and white also play a big part in Halloween color and for this purpose I'm going to think of them as a dark neutral and a light neutral.

     To play with the Halloween color scheme I simply rotated the color wheel a bit and chose a different triad.   My final colors are not an exact triad but they are in the general ball park of blue, red and yellow.  I changed the black and white up a bit too by choosing a dark charcoal grey in place of black and a pale grey for white.   These colors are not at all traditional Halloween colors but they still work beautifully.

    All of the cookies were cut from a basic set of Halloween cookie cutters that I found on clearance last year at the grocery store and similar sets are easy to come by at craft stores and department stores too.  It's important when choosing a non-traditional color scheme to keep your shapes and icons VERY traditional so you don't lose the holiday feel.   The decorating here is also very simple.  Everything was done in easy outline and flooding and finished off with a few dots and lines for details and black sugar sprinkles.  Adding a completely unexpected color scheme gives the cookies an impact they wouldn't have otherwise.

Here are a few resources that can also help you choose a more creative color scheme;

• ColorQ is a paper-crafting challenge blog that hosts weekly color challenges for card makers.  Their archives are a fantastic place to see different color schemes in action. 
• Photo Card Boutique has an extensive collection of color schemes.  Pick any one and put it on a cookie!
• Color Scheme Designer is a good place to play with a color wheel online.  You can see the different color relationships and variations in action.

Enjoy your weekend!