I need a book, or some other sort of help

[MedCruise07]

Can anyone recommend abook that talks about layouts and color schemes? I think I have some kind of color impairment because I just cannot figure out how to choose which colors to use for mats and background, never mind any sort of embellishments. It's making me crazy--I have three different versions of my layout for the Plaza restaurant and I do not like any of them! (The first one is too much yellow, the second one the dark green just looks too dark (and the green flowers on the background paper sort of overwhelm the pictures), and then there is the one that just has too many pictures.)

I do like some of the pages I have done but unfortunately I cannot figure out what about them I like.

 

[TinkerKat]

A color wheel might be helpful.

But my best recommendation? Try buying scrap "kits" all the guess work is taken out of the mixing and matching of colors.

Creative Memories calls them Power Pallettes
Close to My Heart has them as "kits" I think.
Even Michael's & ACMoore have a couple.

When Matting your pictures .. I always double mat. I use the darker color as the base then lighter color on top followed by the picture.
For the paper you describe as too busy, you could either use less of it, such as using it as a length wise border to left/right of page or try to match it up with pictures and perhaps use it as base mat color.

Good Luck! Kathy

 

[Fran98765]

You could take a picture of each page assembled, before gluing everything down. Do this for each plan and post them here and perhaps some of the ladies here could offer advice on improvements.

 

[PoohBearLovinMama]

There's a book out by Jim Krause called Color Index and Color Index 2 that have over 1500 color combinations is it. I use that along with a color wheel and the gallon, quart, pint technique for pages. When using 3 or more colors it will be most balances by having a main color (gallon) like your background paper. Then the next color would be in smaller amounts (quart) like mats or PP etc. Then the pints would be accent colors.

When I use those types of techniques, I'm usually pretty happy with my results. HTH!