Help with Color Palettes Using a Free App!

This weekend, I made a discovery that is changing my cookie decorating life! 

I think there are two things that set apart okay cookie decorators from great cookie artists. And I struggle with both. Hooray!

One is icing consistency and the second is color. We’re talking about color today. 

There are some people who can visualize colors and determine what will look great together. Then, they can mix food colors to achieve those colors. I can’t do either. If I just follow my imagination, I end up with cookies that look like they should belong in a 1970’s cookbook.  You know how appetizing those pictures were, don’t you?

I’ve been planning to repaint my living room and looking at different paint colors.  I downloaded an app to explore colors. When I was falling asleep last week, I had the revelation that this app, meant for painting, would be awesome for developing cookie color palettes! It’s my best idea since the blazer. (That’s another story.)

The app is called Sherwin Williams ColorSnap. And it’s free!

Lemme show you how I used it.

It pulls up an entire rainbow of available paint colors in the “explore color” mode.

When you tap on a color it enlarges the color. If you click on it again, it adds it to the palette below.

You can play around with colors. Add some.

 

Delete them, if you find that they don’t look good together or don’t convey the mood or theme. There is no pressure. You can try all sorts of colors and it won’t ruin any icing or any cookies. I threw some colors onto this palette that are not so great together, just to demonstrate.

Once you are done exploring and are happy with your palette, you can open the palette under “saved colors.” And you can give it a name if you want.

 

Now, if you are talented enough to look at a color and be able to recreate it, then go for it.

If you’re like me you need a little extra guidance. 

So, I opened the palette on my phone and matched each color to Lila Loa’s color chart cards (which I can’t recommend highly enough!) This gave me a starting point. Otherwise, I would have no heavenly idea where to start. I just don’t have skills.

 

This is just the beginning of how useful this little app is! I’ll share more in the future. But here is what came of my palette planning with this free app.

I’m pretty happy with my V-day cookies!