#CRAFT WITH ANASTASIA--PANTONE COLOR OF THE YEAR

Pantone 2019 Color of the Year: Living Coral 

“Life affirming coral hue energizes and enlivens with a softer edge”

Each year Pantone, a provider of professional color standards and digital solutions for the design industry, selects a Color of the Year. For 2019 that color is Living Coral. Living Coral is described as “an animating and life-affirming shade of orange with a golden undertone.”

According to the Pantone press release, Living Coral was chosen because it “embraces us with warmth and nourishment to provide comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment…Living Coral welcomes and encourages lighthearted activity. Symbolizing our innate need for optimism and joyful pursuits, Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral embodies our desire for playful expression.”

According to Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute, “Color is an equalizing lens through which we experience our natural and digital realities and this is particularly true for Living Coral.” She goes on to state, “With consumers craving human interaction and social connection, the humanizing and heartening qualities displayed by the convivial Pantone Living Coral hit a responsive chord.”

Look for Living Coral to show up in both women’s and men’s fashion and accessories in both solid colors and patterns and as a contrast to other colors. Living Coral will also show up in cosmetics in blush, eye shadow, lipsticks, and nail polish.

You’ll also see Living Coral begin to appear in interior décor and furnishing in wallpaper, rugs, linens, upholstery, and accessories, as well as in package design and product design. By the end of the year you may find the color popping up in countertop appliances and other housewares. Once upon a time, Harvest Gold and Avocado Green were all the rage in kitchen and laundry appliances. Will Living Coral edge out stainless steel in the kitchen? Can Living Coral automobiles be far behind? I suppose we’ll just have to wait to see.

#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--WHAT'S YOUR TYPE (FONT)?

When I was in art school, I took typography courses. Merriam-Webster defines typography as “the style, arrangement, or appearance of typeset matter.” Typography is an art form that uses letters rather than images to convey a message. In class we learned how to choose the perfect font to best partner with our designs to enhance them. Marie Miguel, our guest today, talks about the psychology behind font choices in today’s digital world.

What Your Choice of Font Says About Your Personality (and How This Influences How Others Perceive You)

Aside from a few people with fairly specialized interests, the art of calligraphy is more often admired than practiced these days. Graphology – the study of handwriting – is still used forensically to determine things like whether or not a particular person wrote something or other by hand and what their state of mind might have been, but the idea that a person's psyche can be analyzed through how they shape their P's and Q's has pretty much been debunked with anyone who knows anything about psychology.

In modern times, though, what used to be called penmanship has been replaced by the ability to write in paragraphs, ‘nt abrvt wrds’ unnecessarily, and generally FORMAT AN EMAIL as if your age is in the double-figure range. Part of this means the font you choose, which may seem trivial while you're actually composing a message but can indeed influence the amount of interest and credence you can expect from editors, customer service reps, potential employers and even your mom.

Times New Roman

If you would like nothing less than to stand out from the crowd, use TNR. It's traditional, but also not the easiest to read nor the most stylish – regardless of whether “style” means either something more minimalistic or ornate to you. Using this font basically says to the world that you either don't know how to change the word processor's default, or you just don't care enough to do so, or you're over sixty.

Comic Sans

Used exclusively for children's birthday party invitations. Ignored in all other contexts. Can you imagine an unsolicited manuscript in this font ever being read? There's a first time for everything, but we're not holding our breath.

Arial

Reading a message written in this font gives the idea that the writer probably loves Notepad++, writes in block letters rather than cursive and compiles lists alphabetically. With Arial, the message is the meaning, with no added flair or color.

Cambria

Not as bare-bones simple as Arial yet not as pointlessly ornate as some serif fonts, Cambria has character while still remaining readable and classy. It may be nothing special, but it's rarely the wrong choice, which is probably why it's the default font in Microsoft Word.

Helvetica

In many ways, this font is a suitable go-to option unless you want to express some special kind of emotion. It's clean, cool and easy to read without looking quite as sparse as something like Courier or Arial. While the “best” font will always be a matter of opinion, using Helvetica suggests that you are serious without being stodgy.

Rockwell
Occasionally, a writer really wants to make a point. One of the ways of doing so is to use a lesser known font, forcing the reader to slow down a little and reset their mental preconceptions. While Rockwell isn't all that suited for everyday use, a message in this font takes a little longer to read and will stand out from those written in more easily recognized styles.

#DIY HOME DEC PROJECTS

Author Lois Winston, who writes about all of us in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, is back today with some more discoveries from her recent vacation in Canada.

A week ago last Monday I wrote about a blinged-out tiresculpture I came across in Montreal in front of the Musee des Beaux-Arts. This museum is actually five museums connected by underground tunnels. One of those museums features decorative arts and design. Today I’d like to share some unique yarn projects from that museum. If you’re a knitter or crocheter who also enjoys DIY home dec projects, these pieces will be right up your alley—or perhaps not. 😕

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I won’t begin to try to explain the chair and light fixture in the photos because, frankly, they left me speechless!

#DECORATING WITH JEANIE--GUEST AUTHOR CHRISTINA TETREAULT

Christina Tetreault began writing at the age of ten on her grandmother's manual typewriter and never stopped. Currently, she’s the author of two romance series, The Sherbrookes of Newport and Love on The North Shore. Learn more about Christina and her books at her website. 

Much as there are trends in fashion, which change from year to year and from decade to decade, there are also trends in interior decorating. Some trends are timeless while there are others that everyone would like to forget. For example, I love walking into a stately home built around the turn of the 20^th century with its dark hard wood and built in window seats. However, I still cringe every time I think of my grandmother’s bathroom with its blue and pink tile, pink toilet, pink tub and pink sink. Sometimes I wonder how my poor grandfather lived with it for all those years.

So let’s take a look at some of the trends from the past. In the 1940’s old hand-me-down furniture was common and kitchens were functional, complete with stark white appliances. The 1950’s ushered in rugs with patterns and floral wallpaper. I think I visited plenty of houses stuck in this decade when I was house hunting a few years ago.

The 1960’s were a time of rebellion for many, and interiors were often decorated in brightly mismatched colors. Wall-to-wall carpet became the norm in the 1970’s. Some people even put it in their bathrooms, if you can believe that.  During the 1970’s people started to care less about style and more about comfort. Of course that did not last as the 1980’s ushered in a period of material success and people wanted their homes to at least look like they spent a fortune decorating them. We’ve all been in a few of these homes.

Thankfully, styles again changed, and the 1990’s paved the way for the interiors we tend to see today. Interiors, which are more influenced by comfort and function then looking like you spent a million dollars. Of course, even today they vary greatly from home to home and country to country, often reflecting the personality of the people who live there.

Illustrated throughout this post are just a few of the different interiors I found while doing some research for my book Redeeming The Billionaire, which features an interior designer as my heroine.  These images are courtesy of Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici, Sira Anamwong and digidreamgrafix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Redeeming The Billionaire

Billionaire Trent Sherbrooke works hard and plays harder. He’s never once cared what the media or society says about him, until now.  In order to make it into the United States Senate Trent needs to clean up his reputation and Addison Raimono is just the woman to help him. But soon what he assumed would be a relationship to salvage his reputation turns into so much more. But can a relationship started on a lie ever survive?

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