5 Ways to Showcase Black in Your Projects

It’s Black Friday in the United States – the day after Thanksgiving that marks the kickoff of the Christmas shopping season. Many companies offer big sales on Black Friday, and many people (crazy, crazy people) spend the night outside of the malls and shopping centers to fight the big crowds for the savings. If you are one of those people, then please ignore that “crazy, crazy people” comment – you are lovely, and the others are crazy. ♥

Some consider black a “shade” and some consider black a “color” – I won’t argue either viewpoint, but I do know that black can be a helpful tool in our crafts. To celebrate Black Friday, I’m sharing 5 great ways to use black in our projects and 10 projects that lean on black for very different reasons. You can click on any of these projects to see the original posts for each.

Embrace the Symbolism

Black has many symbolic meanings – think of all the ways we see the color  in the world around us. It symbolizes power, sophistication, death, darkness and mystery. While we see black in religious leaders’ garbs, we also see black in the capes and garbs of witches and sorcerers.

We went to the movies Wednesday night to see Wicked – it was so much better than I had expected (and I had high expectations). Last month I created a card to honor the musical I saw three time on Broadway and to share my excitement about the movie I was looking forward to. In this card, I represented the Wicked Witch’s “evil” nature with the black hats and spikes (they are actually upturned icicles):

Solar eclipses are considered a time for change and new beginnings. It’s usually light that drowns out darkness, so it’s a strange occurrence when the sun is blocked in the middle of the day. I honored this past year when the total eclipse occurred (lots of excitement about that event) in a card. I embraced the darkness of the eclipse as symbolized by black to make this card:

Neutralize Soft Colors

Soft colors can be so beautiful to work with, but I often find they are too sweet or too soft if they are the only shades on a card. An all-pastel card can easily get washed out, needing another tone to ground the soft colors. Black accents, frames, bases or elements can easily be added to pastel projects to make soft colors even softer by offering that dark, rich offset.

The soft backdrop on this card in enhanced by the black forest in the foreground:

The soft inks and panel on this sweet card is made sweeter and softer by the black frames around the panels:

Enhance Bright Colors

Just like the neutralization of soft colors in the previous section, black can be used to offset super-bright colors on a project. The accent helps to temper the bright colors but also makes the bright colors even more bright.

I love the design in this Designer Series Paper, but I think it’s even more special when black sentiment and card base (the sentiment isn’t so bad, either):

Kiwi fruits are bright green and black inside – such a unique fruit! The kiwi on this card and the bright Lemon Lime Twist panel are made even brighter by the black accents, card base and sentiment:

Enjoy a Monochromatic Color Scheme

I love a monochromatic color scheme and often showcase projects with a single color paired with white or black. A black monochromatic card is a very special one for me – it can be very classy, very sophisticated or fun.

This card says “thank you” in a classy, beautiful way – the flowers are still beautiful even without a touch of color:

I didn’t leave these flowers white but still kept with a monochromatic theme – I made this card a long, long time ago, and I still think it’s one of my favorite cards I’ve ever made:

Pull a Little Focus to the Sentiment

No matter how beautiful the background on a card may be, a bold sentiment at the center of the project can pull focus to draw all the attention for itself. A black panel or circle or oval at the center of a card can be a powerful tool when making a card.

The bright, beautiful flowers on this card are lovely, but your eye goes right to the black panel with the lovely sentiment. Your eyes dance around the base panel, but they end at the black panel, right?

There’s so much to love about a bouquet of word balloons in so many great colors, but the black oval on this card brings your eye right to the sentiment on the card:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at black in our craft projects. I hope I’ve inspired you to make friends with the color black and find a way to showcase it in a project today.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Brian

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