This is my post on colour so that I can join the fabulous Ashley at The Handmade Home for her linky party!  She is one of my must reads on a daily basis.  I love her style and her voice.  So funny.  Her voice.  Not her style.  Her style is gorgeous.

I think that geography can have a lot to do with colour choice- it has for me, at least.  I love, love, love all of the beachy and French styles with the blues, but, well… we live in a forest.  This is the view from one of my living room windows.

Beautiful?  Yes.  Calming?  Yes.  Wild?  Yes.  Beachy?  Not so much.

Colour, in our case, also has cultural significance and meaning to our family as my husband and our son are Aboriginal.  These are my husband’s fancy dance bustles and our son’s little traditional bustle (that he sadly no longer fits…sniff).

I know what you are thinking.  Red?  Really?  I agree!  I am usually a little reserved with my choices for our home (bad painting experiences, man), and sometimes I can’t believe that there is so much of it here.  This is how my love affair with red first started.  I bought this loveseat and the matching couch 15 years ago.  See the line of red throughout?  This is where I was first inspired to use red as an accent colour in our home.  I love these couches.  When the material wears through, I am going to have them recovered.  You can bet I will be asking all kinds of advice on what fabric to choose for that little project!

I think the effect is subtle- considering the pattern on the couch and the strength of the colour.  It is pretty well tempered by the neutral wall colour and the barn board floors.

Some of the living room accents are:  my great-grandmother’s chair (recovered) with a gorgeous Pendleton blanket fragment over it (waiting to be made into a pillow),

a beautiful Jeff Daychief print with red border (sorry about the poor quality pic- is it Christmas yet? is my new camera here, yet?),

and an original painted by our son (he used his Ted Harrison books as his inspiration).

Finally, we have the light over the table- a beautiful Tiffany with lots of orangey -red goodness in it.  Guess what colour that front door sitting behind it is going to be (as soon as I get brave enough….any tips on painting a fiberglass front door)?

The kitchen is open to the living room and is, again, quite neutral in terms of counters, cupboards, backsplash and wall colour.  So the red accents are a nice little pop of colour.  You can see I have a red clock, red pendants over the island, and rugs with a red stripe.

Remember that blanket draped on the back of the chair?  It used to be bigger.  I made a little wall organizer out of some of it for our office area by the back door.  It is adjacent to the kitchen/ living room area, so it needed to be art-like.  And by art-like, I mean covered with tiny scraps of paper that my husband and son like to collect with random numbers on them.  It never, ever, looks like this.  Just saying.

It also goes nicely with the Ikea runner I bought 12 years ago that is like brand new.  Amazing Ikea.

Now for a little hidden red.  You all know Annie Sloan and her amazing paint, right?  Guess which colour of hers I love (well, one of them)?

I decided to take some of this and make a chalkboard on the inside of my pantry door.

And while I was at it, I also painted a dresser.  Here it is in our closet with another Jeff Daychief print.  We are very lucky to live by some really talented artists.

Upstairs is where I got brave and decided to use red as something a little more than an accent.  I have always loved red walls in certain rooms.  Can I introduce you to my library?

This picture is a little dark.  The colour on the walls is called Canuck Red by General Paints.  Here’s a little lighter shot.

Ok.  So now in this one it is a little overexposed (still no camera?) but the colour is fairly true on the right and towards the top of this picture.  Also note my lovely red pendants.  Yes.  I have 4 red pendants in my house.  I love how the red peeks out from behind the books and around the shelves.

I do enjoy my red.  But, I keep thinking about that blue…. you know, I have a lot of blue artwork just waiting to be put up on a wall.  We are in the process of building an art ledge to put these on.  It will line one of our upstairs hallways.

So far, I am pretty happy with the way that colour has been working in our home.  I like a kind of strange combination of calm and neutral with quite warm and rustic.  Still working on it.  We just moved into our new house a year ago, and there are still a lot of blank walls and areas that need filling and working on.

For example, I have a craft room/ spare bedroom that is virtually a blank slate… and I keep thinking about that lovely turquoise/ red colour combo some talented ladies have been using in their home…hmmmm.

And I’ll let you know about that door.