Outdoor Wednesday: Inspiration Everywhere

First, a special thank you to Susan at A Southern Daydreamer for allowing me to be part of this week's Outdoor Wednesday posts. Please stop over after your done here and check out the other outdoor shots this week.

Also, if you were directed here on my post about the ever inspiring Joni Webb, it's just below this one! :)

For this week's Outdoor Wednesday post, I thought I'd take a bit of a detour. Well, not so much a detour as a liberty, afterall - isn't that what this is all about? The great outdoors are a huge source of interior design inspiration for me. Now, it's not just outdoors! I come to my designs in a variety of ways - sometimes it's a fabric, sometimes it's an accessory, and sometimes it's just the person who asks for help. But for color inspiration and pleasing combinations, I tend to look to things I find appealing in nature. For instance, if I said that I wanted to do a modern bedroom in the moss green of grass and yellow of lemons - my mind would picture the final product along side something that has those colors occurring naturally - like a lemon tree:

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Or, if someone said to me that they were looking for something bright and cheery, and I knew they loved pink - I'd pair it with green ... as the color combination found in watermelon is extremely delicious!

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So when I heard that purple (which made a splash in lighter hues: lilac, faded plum, and lavender in 2008) was going to take the place of some other darker shades in moody rooms used at night: bedrooms and dining rooms, I thought - Iris!

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Notice the natural combination of yellow, varied shades of purple and kelly green? The petals delicate but strong, the overall impact punchy yet sophisticated? It seemed like a pretty smart choice.

Colors in flowers, landscapes, fruits, foods - they can be inspiring on many levels. Whether they make you think of furniture, paint, accessories, or fabrics - colors, textures, or shapes - they are a free and valuable resource available to everyone for free!

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The colors of nature are vast and the combinations are endless: think of the gorgeous color variations in the feather of a peacock, or the sunset. The possibilities for creating beauty from this vast resource is uncanny.

For instance, say the color of an orchid inspires you to paint. Rather than taking the purple from it's delicate petal, or the green from it's hardy stem - why not combine the two?

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Even flower arrangements can be inspirational. Take for instance, red roses and babies breath with fern leaf in a crystal vase could be translated into an elegant dinner table set with white linen tablecloth, red cloth napkins tied with a fern leaf, crystal candle sticks and white candles.

This informal arrangement in a modern vase certainly could inspire someone to create this modern and informal living room / kitchen:

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What about you!? Do you have any color or design inspirations you take from nature? I'd love to hear your processes!