Watching our new video about making the Paint Chip Orbs project featured in this issue reminded me of one of my own obsessions: Paint chips!

There are all kinds of design blogs that put together palettes based on things in nature or trips abroad or whatever. They have direction, a story. I think I just like color. I like to look at colors and arrange them in different combinations to produce thrilling or moody results. But I don’t ever imagine anything happening from there. I’m happy just to see these colors together, even for an instant.

There are sites for people like me, people who could contentedly arrange blocks of color all day long for no real purpose. One is Colourlovers; probably the most popular one is called Kuler. Despite the way it is pronounced (say it out loud), it is for nerds. The good kind. 

This obsession started off with a fantasy to paint my apartment. As an itinerant sort, hitting my one-year anniversary would be a big deal. I told myself if I made it, I’d do something dazzling to the horribly oppressive pink-beige Band-Aid-colored walls. I started collecting paint chips of colors I liked, and then I got so overwhelmed by my ideas that I couldn’t make up my mind. And now, more than two years later, I’m moving.

I’ve kept the paint chips though. They live in a beat-up padded envelope (how classy) that I whip out whenever I want to jolt my imagination or change up my humor. I prefer hands-on methodology, even if it does mean my colors get a little grubby and beat-up. I pull out my color blocks and start arranging, and, corny as it seems, the world feels full of possibility. Click here for a slideshow of my latest combos.

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