In this post series – How To Use Photos You Love To Create An Amazing DIY Color Palette, we’re going to show you how to use a photo you love (and the colors within it) to create your own color palette. Regardless of what your next DIY project is, whether that’s a new web design, blog theme, brand makeover or something more crafty like painting or home decorating, we’ll show you the proven 5 step process to go from photo to palette!

This blog post series, you’ll not only find 5 easy steps to creating an amazing color palette for your next DIY project but you’ll see how I’ve used these steps to inspire the color palette for my next collection of poured acrylic artwork.

Here are the 5 steps to use a photo you absolutely love (even though you may not know why you do!) to create a beautiful color palette. Don’t forget to use it for your next DIY project!

Step 1: Choose a Photo You Love

Step 2: Unveil The Beauty Of The Photo You Love

Step 3: Derive Your Own Colour Palette

Step 4: Create Your Color Palette In Your Craft/DIY Medium

Step 5: Use Your New Color Palette In Your Next DIY Project

Step 1: Choose a Photo You Love

In an era of endless social media and access to vast amounts of information at our fingertips, finding a photo you love should be really really easy. Chances are you’ve probably already found at least 20 today on your platform of choice like Instagram or Pinterest. However, selecting just one may be entirely different story…. with that you are on your own…

No, really if you’re still stuck choosing or narrowing it down to just one photo, don’t get so caught up with it because by the time we are through with this, you would’ve slightly altered your colors to make them even better and customized it to work with your craft/DIY project medium. So they may be slightly different from your photo and so there is no point persisting too long over finding the perfect photo.

We are drawn to photos by the colors within them, or the moods they portray or the way patterns and design elements are arranged in their composition. You probably have no idea what really is drawing you that photo you love, but there’s a safe bet that the colors within it are invoking an emotional response within you. That response within you that makes you tap on your Instagram feed or click to pin to add to your Pinterest boards. Although you may not know what you love about it, one thing is for sure – you do love it.

The reason why it’s such a cool idea to use a photo to inspire your color palette is because if you really like the photo then it’s already doing something right and you don’t have to spend time generating this ‘something right’ that you don’t really understand. Here in this example, we’ll be focusing on the color aspect of the photo and that ‘thing’ it’s doing right with the colors. So why not use the already constructed beautiful color combinations and draw inspiration from them!

[Nordic Inspired Poured Acrylic Artwork Collection]

Step 1: Choose a Photo You Love

Okay, I think by now we can all admit, without shame, that we spend a good amount of time browsing through all the pictures on Instagram. So on one fine day I came across a Melbourne-based home décor store on Instagram (you should also check them out too, their handle is @norsuinteriors). After I finished drooling over all the home décor stock on their feed I ventured over to their website for more. After some perusing on their website I saw that they had several photos of their PR material on their website – and I thought hey I love the colors in these photos I wonder if I can use these colors in my artwork. And so this is where it all began…

Coming up next on Part 2 of How To Use Photos You Love To Create An Amazing DIY Color Palette Series is Step 2: Unveil The Beauty Of The Photo You Love. This is where I will show you how I extracted the colors from my favorite Norsu Interiors photos to reveal the beautiful harmonious colors hidden within the photos taken by Stu Morley. Stay tuned.