Mixing Paint to Create Custom Colors

Most of us are not blessed with an endless income to buy, or unlimited space to store, every color of paint, but we would still like more color options when adding touches of paint to scrapbook pages. Mixing paint to create custom colors is an easy and inexpensive alternative!

Here are the basic supplies needed to mix your own custom colors:

• paintbrush
• flat palette (such as a styrofoam meat tray, a paper plate, or a small pane of glass)
• small cup of water to clean your brush
• paper towels and/or napkins
• color wheel
• paint (red, yellow, blue, white and black)

In order to effectively mix paint colors, first you must understand the fundamentals of mixing colors.

Basic colors of red, yellow, blue (the primary colors), as well as black and white, are mixed to create all other colors. Below are the basic color formulas:

Red + Yellow = Orange
Yellow + Blue = Green
Blue + Red = Violet
Red + Orange = Red-orange
Yellow + Orange = Yellow-orange
Yellow + Green = Yellow-green
Blue + Green = Blue-green
Blue + Violet = Blue-violet
Red + Violet = Red-violet

Black or white paint can be added to any of the resulting colors to make the color darker or lighter.

Now that you know all about color formulas, you can use a color wheel as a reference when you mix paint and create custom colors.

Choose the color from the color wheel that you would like to create and ask yourself the following questions to determine which colors should be mixed together. The answers given below are to create a lime-green color.

Which primary colors does my color fall between?
Yellow and Blue.

This tells me that the first step should be to mix yellow and blue paint together to create a base color of grass green.

Which primary color is closest to my color?
Yellow

The next step is to add more yellow to the base color of grass green in order to create the custom color of lime-green.

From here you can add more paint until you find the color that’s just right. To create the lime-green color in the example, I could add more yellow, blue, white or black.

• Avoid adding too many colors because the paint will turn brownish-gray.
• Work with small amounts of paint as you test different mixtures.
• Once you create the perfect color be sure to mix enough for your whole project. It is nearly impossible to mix the same color twice and you don’t want to run out in the middle of a project.

By mixing paints, suddenly your five paint color options open up and become an endless array of possibilities.