What do adorable animals, whimsical art and colorful design have in common? Design studio Meomi can tell you — If you love all of the aforementioned things, Meomi may be heaven for you when it comes to art and wallpapers.

Meomi is comprised of two artists, Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy. Together they have created art for an illustrious list of clientele, including Google, Electronic Arts and Nick Jr. Vicki and Michael also act as authors and artists behind the Octonauts series of children’s books. Meomi’s 2008 wallpaper story takes place in Kachi Kingdom, where you follow the adventures of Johnny Cloudseed, following in his grandfather’s footsteps as a seeder and planting seeds that assist the Kachi spirits to grow their “Magical Moments” plants.

Meomi reveal more about Johnny’s story month by month as new wallpapers come out (each month’s has a calendar on it so you can track the days along with the story.) Their most recent print project is Color Cloud Seeding, in which Meomi explore the lost art of “cloud gardening” in drawings, sketches and photos, creating a crisp wonderland of hues.

About those wallpapers — Meomi have a whole page of their website dedicated to them that date all the way back to 2002 (when the year ends, they provide the wallpapers with the calendars removed so you can enjoy the art on its own.) I’ve provided some of them here for you to see, but if you want the full sized versions check out the Meomi website to grab them and make your desktop worth smiling at when you come in on Monday morning.


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For the last 100 years or so kids have been exploring and creating worlds of color with Crayons. For a lot of us, our life long love affairs with color began with these wax sticks and a blank sheet of paper. According to a Yale University study, the scent of Crayola crayons is among the 20 most recognizable to American adults. Coffee and peanut butter are 1 and 2. Here we go down crayon color memory lane with all 120 color names and hex codes, fun facts and photos.

Photo by Sir Fish

Crayola crayons currently come in 120 colors including 23 reds, 20 greens, 19 blues, 16 purples, 14 oranges, 11 browns, 8 yellows, 2 grays, 2 coppers, 2 blacks, 1 white, 1 gold and 1 silver. Although Crayola crayons come in 120 different colors, the labels are only made in 18, which cover the full color spectrum. Nearly 3 billion crayons are made each year, an average of 12 million daily. That’s enough to circle the globe 6 times with color!

120 Crayon Names and Color Codes

Aaron at ColorSchemer.com created a fun list of all 120 Crayon Colors with their hex codes and RGB values. “All of these colors are rough approximations from Crayola’s current list of 120 Crayon Colors. -CS”


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With the release of the COLOURlovers API, you can now access almost 1 million named colors and more than 325,000 color palettes for your creative projects and applications. Creating a theme editor and want to give your users some color theme options? Creating a visual project that ties keywords to colors? Who knows what amazingly creative stuff people will come up with.

Below are two showcase examples of the COLOURlovers API in action as well as the full API documentation. Happy API COLOURloving!

COLOURlovers API Usage Showcase

Desktop Color Search - AIR App

Desktop Color Search is an Adobe AIR app that runs on your desktop and allows you to search the entire COLOURlovers database for colors, palettes and patterns. You’ll need to download the Adobe AIR runtime in order to run Desktop Color Search, you can use the link below to install AIR. (It works in both Windows and on Mac OS X)
Special thanks to Levi McCallum at FutonMedia for coding the AIR app.

Download Desktop Color Finder  |  Download Adobe AIR

DEKAF LOVERS

A simple interface to COLOURlover’s deep, deep palette library, it creates randomized compositions using rectangular geometry drawn by the Degrafa drawing library.
Have some fun of your own color fun with Dekaf Lovers.
 



 

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In order to support our growth and the costs of maintaining and developing new features for our color loving community, we’ve added some great extended features and are offering them as a thank you to those who support us with a small yearly sponsorship of only $20. Thank you for helping us grow our wonderful community.

To become a sponsor or to give the gift of color love, visit: www.colourlovers.com/lovers/sponsors

Benefits of Being a Sponsored COLOURlover:

- Have Your Love Notes and Subscription Updates Emailed to You
- Download All Your Colors and Palettes in One File
- See More Recent Activity on Your Profile, Colors, Palettes & Patterns
- Customize Your Profile to Show Top, New or Fave Colors, Patterns or Patterns
- See Custom Palette Widths by Default When Browsing
- Choose Your Top Groups and Lovers to Display on Your Profile
- Get Beta Access to New Tools Before They Are Launched Publicly
- Fancy Avatar and Profile Badges to Show Your Sponsorship
- Help Us Continue to Develop a Supportive, Fun and Creative Community
- More to Come Soon!

Have Your Love Notes and Subscription Updates Emailed to You

See More Recent Activity on Your Profile, Colors, Palettes & Patterns

Show Top, New or Fave Colors, Patterns or Patterns on Your Profile

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If you haven’t heard, Polaroid film is dying.

On February 8th, 2008, the Polaroid corporation announced that the incredible invention of Edwin Land has a permanent expiration date that no refrigeration can postponed; stating, “Polaroid has made the difficult decision to cease manufacturing of instant film products in 2008. We hope that you will continue to choose Polaroid products, as we take instant imaging into the digital platform with exciting new products being launched this year.” The last of the film is projected to expire in September of 2009.

It seems that there is still yet one hope remaining for Polaroid film. Save Polaroid has setup shop to assemble artists and fanatics to save Polaroid.

About Save Polaroid

On February 8, 2008, Polaroid Corporation announced that it will discontinue production of all instant film. This site will document the aftermath of this announcement and will serve as a home-base for the effort to convince another company to begin producing the cherished technology that Polaroid has so carelessly abandoned.

This site is not about saving Polaroid, the company, rather the remarkable invention of Edwin Land, the instant film that made Polaroid a household name.

Photos by Grant Hamilton

What We’ve Done So Far

Since this announcement, we’ve been assembling articles, links, stories and planning out the best way to create a joint effort to save instant film. We’ve contacted Polaroid, Fuji and Ilford about licensing.
- Save Polaroid

Rod Hunting Helps Save Polaroid

My good friend, and fellow member of the Chicago artist family The Post Family, artist Rod Hunting was asked by Save Polaroid to produce a limited run of his Polaroid print to be auctioned off on ebay to raise money for Save Polaroid. I sat down with Rod over some fine malt liquor to discus his ‘Polareds’ project, the end of Polaroid and speeding tickets.

Photo from The Post Family


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In honor of this month’s release of the United States’ redesigned five dollar bill I have been scouring through the 191 currently circulating currencies of the 192 member states of the United Nations to find some of the most colorful, unique and dramatic bank notes.

The New Five

Photo from moneycenteral.msn.com

The redesigned $5 bill was unveiled on September 20, 2007, and was issued on March 13, 2008. Previously covered here on COLOURlovers, the redesign involves some very noticeable changes, mostly for security reasons, but also in an attempt to make the bill more friendly to the visually impaired.

The new five incorporates the use of micro printing of type to make it more difficult to copy. On the front, “FIVE DOLLARS” is written inside the left and right borders. “E PLURIBUS UNUM” is printed at the top of the shield. “USA” is between the columns of the shield and “USA FIVE” is printed on the edge of the most noticeable change, the giant purple “5″.

Photo from moneycenteral.msn.com

The giant purple “5″. Yes, well, it was added to help those who are visually impaired but it may just leave more of us wishing that we were. Not that I necessarily dislike it, mostly I’m not too concerned with what the money looks like since I’m not collecting it for its aesthetic qualities, but a more reasonable choice, or at least a more colorful choice, would have been just to make the whole thing purple and start color coding all of the bills, much like many, if not most, other countries do. Maybe the Government doesn’t want to get too far away from our ‘greenback’.

One Interesting thing about the new five is the use of the EURion constellation which many photocopiers will refuse to copy. This pattern, which is used for the series of little yellow “05″s, is used on many other currencies as well.

Other changes to the bill include the increased use of water marks and an added security strip like those already used for higher denominations.

The Most Colorful Currencies

Compared to those previous drab gray and green bills the US has made some colorful changes to the currency, but it is still nothing compared to the beautifully crafted and colored currencies of Venezuela, Switzerland, and Kyrgyzstan.

The Bolívar Fuerte

Bolívar Fuerte

The Bolívar Fuerte is the new currency of Venezuela since January 1, 2008. It replaced the old Bolívar which was the currency between 1879 and 2007. My personal favorite currency, it is a great example of the amazing bright and colorful notes that are seen throughout many South America countries.

The Bolívar Fuerte includes illustrations of Francisco de Miranda, Pedro Camejo, Cacique Guaicaipuro, Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi, Simón Rodríguez and Simón Bolívar, on the fronts. On the backsides, the notes feature Amazon river dolphins, a giant armadillo, an American Harpy eagle, the hawks bill turtle, a spectacled bear and the red siskin.

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You all are just way to talented! Choosing 3 winners from the 1,500 entries was an incredibly difficult task. It actually took more than a few hours to look at all the entries. (You can view all the contest entries here: Photo Color Inspiration with LuckyOliver) So many were creative, interesting and works of art themselves… but in the end we only have enough prizes for 3 winners and here they are:

1st Prize 8GB iPod Touch or $300 via US check or PayPal 50 LuckyOliver tokens

2nd Prize iPod Shuffle or $79 via US check or PayPal 50 LuckyOliver tokens

3rd Prize iTunes Gift Card or $25 via US check or PayPal 25 LuckyOliver tokens

Honorable Entries

Getting 3 from 1,500 was nearly impossible. Along the way we kept trimming the list of palettes we loved down to a smaller number and the palettes below stayed with us for most of the way. Even though they didn’t win, we wanted to share a little extra love with these palettes.

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Two artists are taking some of our favorite colorful treats and turning them into a new medium for their artistic expression.

Liz Hickok has taken each flavor of America’s favorite gelatin desert and molded it into colorful models of San Francisco and Scottsdale. Since JELL-O isn’t the most durable of materials, as part of the project she has two videos that capture these wonderfully sculpted cityscapes. You can see them here and here.

Working with gummy bears, Yaya Chou has created some of the most fascinating sculptures, the best being, of course, a bear skin rug.

San Francisco In Jell-O

This project consists of photographs and video, which depict various San Francisco landscapes. I make the landscapes by constructing scale models of the architectural elements which I use to make molds. I then cast the buildings in Jell-O. Similar to making a movie set, I add backdrops, which I often paint, and elements such as mountains or trees, and then I dramatically light the scenes from the back or underneath. The Jell-O sculptures quickly decay, leaving the photographs and video as the remains.

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Even if you haven’t yet been able to travel as your wildest dreams may desire, put these locations on your list of places to see in life. I hope you enjoy the pictures in our color-centric version of the series, and we regret it can’t contain every one of the world’s gorgeous locations. If you want even more, Read the book of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die or visit the Flickr 1,000 Places Group.

Here Are 19 of Those Places…

by Christopher Chan
The Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

by Jeff Epp
Cherry Blossom Viewing, Japan

by Geff Rossi
Notre-Dame Basilica, Quebec, Canada

by Becky E
Ayers Rock and the Olgas, Australia

by il Presbite
Siena, Italy

by nadi0
The Great Ocean Road, Australia

by Barrosopal
Palacio de Cristal, Retiro Park, Madrid

by Christopher Chan
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco


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LuckyOliver is a growing stock photo marketplace that helps creative people buy and sell images. LuckyOliver’s quality, low cost stock photos are used by designers, small businesses, marketers and DIY enthusiasts.

The Contest is Now Closed.

Wow! So many amazing entries. We’re now looking at the more than 1,500 entries to find the winners of the contest. We’ll be posting the results very soon. Thank you to all who shared some of your color inspiration.

Contest Details:

LuckyOliver.com is a great place to get wonderful stock photos at a good price… and COLOURlovers is a great place to share color ideas and inspiration. With your help we want to showcase some of the great photos on LuckyOliver and also your color loving talents at making color palettes. All you need to do to enter this contest is create a color palette inspired by a photo on LuckyOliver. We know you love sharing your color inspiration with others and now we’re giving you the opportunity to win some awesome prizes for doing exactly what you love to do… So crank up your inspiration motors and start sharing the photo and color love.

This content will end March 17th and the winners will be announced on both COLOURlovers and LuckyOliver.com. Winners will be selected for the best palettes that captured the spirit / mood of the inspiration photo. Enter early and enter often.

How to Enter:

Step 1

Browse the great images at LuckyOliver.com and choose one that inspires you.

 

Step 2

Save the watermarked photo preview to your computer

 
And Copy the URL to the photo

 

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