Plumage by Martha Stewart

Lately I've been trying to concentrate on finishing old, half-finished projects before I move onto the new ones on our list.  For example, I want to build bunk beds for my son's room - but first I'm making myself finally finish the bookshelves I built over a year ago.  I got to the point where they were functional, and never finished painting them.  So they have been sitting half-painted, half-primed and one of them has an unattached back.  Pathetic, I know.

Anyway, the color I picked out ages ago and still love is Martha Stewart's Plumage for Home Depot.

It's the perfect, dark teal, peacock blue color.  This weekend I picked up a quart of it at Home Depot to finish the bookshelves and to redo the poster bed I bought off of Craigslist.    I'm almost finished with the bed, so I hope to have a big reveal soon.  Meanwhile, I thought I would share some other blog images I found featuring this great color:


Young House Love color matched it in no-VOC paint for their guest room.

A Brooklyn Limestone redid a sofa table/sideboard.

Wildwood Creek redid a campaign dresser.  Obviously, the color looks really great with gold.

Triangle Honeymoon did a desk.  This last picture looks the color in real life.  At least on my monitor.

I love the color so much.  Now I have to decide whether to glaze or not to glaze - that's always the question.  So far, I haven't glazed anything because I have always loved the way the freshly painted piece looks.  However, I am very tempted to glaze this one because I think it will really accentuate the French detailing.  But I won't do it heavily since I don't want it to go all French-country on me.  If I hate it, I can always paint over it with another coat, right?

Name That Color

I've been obsessing over this picture:


Via Decorpad

I discovered it during a search for the La Fiorentina fabric by Lee Jofa in the wine/magenta colorway - which is by far one of my favorite fabrics ever. 

Too bad I'm too poor to own any.  One day...

Anyway, I digress.  The original picture pairs the magenta pillows and neutrals with a bold blue wall.

LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE

"Honey, what would you call this color?" I ask the boyfriend one night.

"Turquoise?"

"No, that would be lighter I think.  Electric blue?"

"Aqua?"

This went on for about five minutes a bit, and nothing seemed to fit.  So the color was stashed away in my brain as "Crazy Blue."  Short for "Crazy Freakin' Awesome Blue" of course.

Today I decided to try and find out the real name for the color.  During my google searches, I luckily stumbled upon a site called Name That Color.  Designed by a guy who admits full ignorance to knowing what lavender, mauve, or indigo look like - you can drag a color wheel and find out a name for that elusive color.  You can also use the drop down menu to search through the alphabetical list of colors.  That was how I found a match.

Deep Cerulean.  Do I get bonus points because I guessed cerulean at some point in our game of "Let's Name Every Color of Blue That We Know"?

I think it's a pretty close match - right?

Just for fun I also tried to match the color at BenjaminMoore.com and came up with Laguna Blue.  It's always hard to tell for sure from a computer screen, but it looks pretty darn close.

Since I can't paint the walls of our rental, the goal is to find a fabric I like in this color - either for a headboard or curtains for the master.  I'm considering this:

Not an exact match, but it's on sale crazy cheap right now and they only have a very limited amount, so that might be the deciding factor.

Or maybe I'll let my job interview this morning be the deciding factor.  Get the job - buy the fabric.  Then we can rename it "Kai's Not So Freaking Poor and Can Actually Buy Stuff for the House Instead of Just Talk About It Blue."  Rolls off the tongue.