As you know, because the guy in the cubicle next to you is dressed like obi-wan kenobi and he swears he only wears it this one day out of the year, it's Halloween! To celebrate this occasion filled with dastardly color of bright orange pumpkins, green witches and goblins, and candy colored... well, candy, we're showcasing some of the most colorful and incredible Halloween makeup. From horror movie classics to talented DIYers these makeup jobs will scare the color right out of your skin.

For more Halloween color check out these posts: Color Inspiration From the History of Halloween, & The Absolutely Scariest Colors Imaginable.

Photo by .sanden.

Photo by snowkei

Photo by Tony Francesconi

Photo by .sanden.

Photo by Ligadier Truffaut

Photo by Ligadier Truffaut

Photo by Ligadier Truffaut

Photo by Ligadier Truffaut

Makup-fx

Photo by Word Freak

"Color?" said the vampire. "Is that all? Color iss eazy-peazy. How soon do you vant it?"—Terry Pratchett, The Truth, 2001 Black silk, white incisors, blood-red lips, pallid complexions, deep purple velvet.

Truly, "the horror of vampirism is expressed in color" (Diane Negra, The Irish in Us, 2006).

The timeless lore of vampires has left a colorful and enduring mark on world culture. If you think most vampires sport Transylvanian accents and Carpathian fashions, think again. Chinese vampires (Geung-Si), for example, have a rich history of their own. Their limbs stiffened by rigor mortis, Chinese vampires move by hopping, their arms outstretched like zombies to seize their prey. They have long fangs and even longer fingernails, which they use to stab their victims and suck out the life energy. They wear traditional Manchu robes of black silk and round black hats from the Qing dynasty. What turns a corpse into a Chinese vampire? A lingering lust for revenge, an improper burial, a violent death, or a mischievous spirit. Chinese vampires can be stopped only by Taoist priests armed with magic talismans. The priest paints red calligraphy onto a yellow strip of parchment and slaps the talisman onto the vampire's ghastly white forehead, rendering him immobile. Makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin has a tip for making very dark vampire colors less extreme and severe. He recommends surrounding the vampire color with taupe or brownish-gray (Jessica Pallingston, Lipstick, 1999).

Because vampires are allergic to sunlight, vampiric colors often evoke the shades of midnight:

Photo by LOKAOTICO

As vampires are sustained by blood, it comes as no surprise that there are a great many sanguinary colors:

No other color in modern history has carried such gravitas when it comes to associations with masculinity, femininity and politics. The color pink a vessel for weighty subject material, indeed. Especially when you consider the fact that it has only been around in its proper form for less than 500 years. Who knows what the future for this light shade of red will hold, but this info graphic created by Voltage Creative covers the last hundred years of politics and pop culture in all things pink.

Click to scroll the full graphic.

Since the first self adhesive stamp (the Penny Black, made in 1840 featuring the bust of Queen Victoria) stamp designs have been one of the most highly visible designs in society, one that is particularly important since it represents the nation it comes from.

Today we are featuring some stamps from around the world that you will probably never come across, and if you did you would be quite happy because of their value, along with info about the history of stamp design.

The most common types of stamp designs are Portrait bust, Emblem, Numeric, or Pictorial.

Color & Stamps

Although multi-color printing was always possible, and may be seen on the earliest stamps of Switzerland, the process was slow and expensive, and most stamps were in one or two colors until the 1960s.

World's Most Valuable Stamps

Post Office Mauritius, 1847 It is estimated that fewer than 30 individual copies of these stamps have survived and they are valued at between $600,000 or more depending on the condition of the particular stamp being sold. In 1993 a cover bearing 2 of these stamps sold for a whopping $3.8 million, the highest price ever paid any philatelic item.

Sweden Three Skilling Banco, Yellow Color Error, 1855 The three skilling stamp (yellow color error) was issued in Sweden in 1855. Due to a printing error, this stamp is printed on yellow colored paper (meant for the eight skilling stamp of the same set) instead of the usual green color (used for the three skilling stamp). One copy of the yellow error variety of this stamp was found in 1885 by a young Swedish boy in his grandfather's collection.It is a one-of -a- kind rarity, as no other copies have been discovered to date. In 1996 the stamp was sold to an anonymous collector for $2.3 million at auction.

U.S. Franklin Z-Grill, 1867 This stamp is the rarest of all U.S. stamps, as only 2 copies are known to exist. These stamps depict a portrait of Benjamin Franklin and are embossed with a "Z-Grill" - being a pattern of tiny squares embossed into the paper and visible on the back of the stamps. The purpose of the "Z-Grill" was to permit the canceling ink to be absorbed into the stamp paper thus preventing those who wanted to cheat the post from washing out cancellation marks.The use of "Z-Grills" was not found to be practical and the practice was soon discontinued. An 1868 1 cent "Z-Grill" stamp sold for $930,000 in 1988.

There are two types of leaf art: using the leaf as a canvas and creating an image with the use of paints and brushes, and cutting and pasting dry leaves to create the image. Below are examples of both of these styles which require an incredible amount of patients to create these intricate and beautiful works. While the sources I found divided styles by country; Japan, Vietnam and India, I don't know if these contrasting styles are truly unique to each country. If anybody else knows anything about leaf art please leave a comment.

Japanese Leaf Painting

Kazou Akasaki creates his works by using only the natural colors of the fallen leaves. This incredibly intricate process can take up to 6 months to create a single pieces. A story surrounding his humble beginnings and rise to fame goes as such:

In Japan, Kazuo Akasaki is now famous in the field of leaf painting art. Many art-schools in this cheery flower country were named after him. Twenty years ago, he was unknown artist in Japan and lived in misery. But he did not care about that, the only thing that occupied his mind was: Made paintings from dry leaf. Despite the fact that his household was in major debt and they had angry loan sharks banging on their doors, Akasaki continued to work on his art and his family supported him. When all hope seemed lost, they received a phone call informing them that the following painting had been awarded the “Salon de Paris” at the 1986 Fine-arts Paris Exhibition of Japan: The prize launched Akasaki’s successful art career, giving impetus to his glorious leaf painting art.

Limited by the colors of the leaves, the pieces have a sorrowful and solemn feel, but are nonetheless colorful in their creation.

On of the most colorful times in history was the 60's and the period of psychedelic art, which used bright and highly contrasting colors, surreal images and swirling patterns of psychedelic states of consciousness...

Today we're taking a look at some work by a few of the classic psychedelic poster artists along with a contemporary psychedelic artist, plus a little altered mind inspiration from the COLOURlovers groups New Rave, Techno Electro and Glow in the Dark and Neon.

Victor Moscoso

Victor Moscoso

Poster Art

At the forefront of the 1960s Psychedelic Art movement were San Francisco poster artists such as: Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse & Alton Kelley, and Wes Wilson. Their Psychedelic Rock concert posters were inspired by Art Nouveau, Victoriana, Dada, and Pop Art. Richly saturated colors in glaring contrast, elaborately ornate lettering, strongly symmetrical composition, collage elements, and bizarre iconography are all hallmarks of the San Francisco psychedelic poster art style. The style flourished from about 1966 - 1972. Their work was immediately influential to album cover art, and indeed all of the aforementioned artists also created album covers. - read more

Alton Kelley

Alton Kelley

Wes Wilson

Wes Wilson

LSD Blotter Art

Psychedelic art was also applied to the LSD itself. LSD began to be put on blotter paper in the early 1970s and this gave rise to a specialized art form of decorating the blotter paper. Often the blotter paper was decorated with tiny insignia on each perforated square tab, but by the 1990s this had progressed to complete four color designs often involving an entire page of 900 or more tabs. Mark McCloud is a recognized authority on the history of LSD blotter art. - read more

Here's some color inspiration by way of 1920 - 1940's Japan in the form of matchbox labels. Thanks to Mariad for sharing her grandfather's wonderful collection in this Flickr set. If you enjoy these Mariad, recommends the book "Matchbox Label Collection 1920s-40s." To see more Japanese matchbox labels check out this link.

Today is blog action day, and blogs around the world are uniting to change the subject to that of poverty.

It doesn't take much to inspire us to reach out to fellow humans when they're struggling, especially when that struggle is about their fundamental survival. As far as our great societies have developed, it is hard to believe that half of the world's population is still impoverished, struggling each day trying to find things that us in the other half can so easily take for granted. Things as essential as water, food, clothing, shelter and an education. It is a great privilege to allow our minds to wander off to places, to create beautiful things and let colors dance in our heads, but this is only possible because we are not faced with those, what might be considered 'primitive' problems of our own immediate survival.

Percent Living on Less Than $1 a day

"The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US$ (PPP) 1 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day, estimating that "in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day."

Are things getting better? Life expectancy has greatly increased. Child mortality has decreased in every developing region of the world. The proportion of the world's population living in countries where per-capita food supplies are less than 2,200 calories (9,200 kilojoules) per day decreased from 56% in the mid-1960s to below 10% by the 1990s, and so on... Yet "More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening." "The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income." "Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names."

Percent Population Undernourished

Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.

Branding is an important part of any political campaign, but just as we rarely see candidates stray from the politics of their parties... rarely do we see them stray from the red, white and blue palette when branding their campaigns. However, there have been a few that have embraced other colors like yellow, green, black and variations of the standard U.S. blue. Today, we're taking a look at some of the earliest colored political campaign posters, and the posters of those candidates who have strayed from the usual palette.

Early U.S. Campaign Posters: 1844 - 1896

Grand National, Democratic banner 1844

Grand National, Whig banner 1848

Zachary Taylor, the nation's choice... 1847

Grand National, Democratic banner 1852

Grand National Republican banner 1856

Grand National Union banner 1864

National Democratic chart 1876

James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur 1880

No, it's not some sort of uber green that Yahoo has achieved, it's just another marketing campaign.

We all have our favorite new marketing campaigns: the ones where companies do seemingly unrelated things to boost their street cred and show everyone they care about things other than money and you buying their products...

I will be quite the branded color palette if I add purple to my yellow live strong bracelet, my white ONE campaign bracelet... I think the orange campaign is done now that the Olympics are over, so that should free up another article of clothing. I could put my pink back on for breast cancer awareness... I certainly can't use magenta anymore, thanks to t-mobile... Man, I better start grabbing up some colors of my own before people start to think I'm a billboard for an NGO or tech company even though I won't actually have any visible company names on my clothing, just colors. I might not be wearing the names of designers but with they way things are going fashion labels are sure to buy up black any day now and then where will we be.

In such a campaign, Yahoo has launched a new web portal as a base of their new “Start Wearing Purple” campaign about being purple. Purple, as yahoo says, is the color of "creativity and innovation" and has been a part of their corporate identity since it's beginnings, even though I thought they were red, but who goes by logos these days when companies are filling the streets with purple bikes that record a photo every 60 seconds to capture the bikes journeys on a flickr account, or get funny people to do funny things with the color purple, both of which are a part of yahoo's purple campaign. Other highlights of the campaign include: daily purple links, a store of purple wears, purple pranks, and so on.