it's not easy being green

It might be more accurate to say, 'it's not easy finding green'. Who knew finding the right shade of paint could be so dang hard?! GAAH! It's no secret that green is my favorite color; it's the color of springtime, renewal... money! heh heh heh ...that said, I decided green would be the color for my craft room/studio/office -or as it's come to be known lately, the place I plant my fat ass and surf the web. It's true, I haven't been feeling all that crafty lately, thus the reason for the room makeover. I figure, maybe, with a fresh, clean, spunky room, inspiration will strike ~or~ at the very least, I'll have a spiffy new room to bunk in once my hubs gets fed up with my 'projects'. LOL

My search for the perfect green started out at the local paint store where I spent a good long time gathering paint chips and with my hands full of every color from 'tropical grass' to 'zippidy doo dah' (yeah thats really a color!) I flashed a smile at the paint gal and headed out the door with a promise to be back soon.

After coming home and taping several paint chips up on the wall, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what I wanted; something fresh, maybe even a little bit unexpected but not too over the top. I want the ho-hum blah ...ness to be replaced by a shot of enthusiasm, but I don't want to have to bust out the shades to enjoy it. Should be easy enough, yes? Uhm... No.

I'm no stranger to color. I've taken art classes, I know how the color wheel works -that blue and yellow make green... but this paint business -whew- it's so much more complex. There are blue-greens, yellow-greens, minty greens, pine greens, grass greens, soft greens, and the ever poplular, puke {or baby poop} greens... there are more, but I'm sure you get the picture. The first color I chose to sample was called 'Sunny Glade', a nice enough color but after a couple of days of looking at it on the wall, it looked too minty. Hmmmph. I really thought it was the one.

Meanwhile, while visiting my friend Wendall's blog (visiting/stalking, whatever! -you say potato, I say spud...) I got a look at her studio and BAM it hit me -THAT'S the green! I LOVE IT -it's perfect. So, I email and nag her and beg for all the paint details and being the soooper schweetie that she is {or maybe she was askeered that her freaky blog stalker had contacted her??} she climbed around under the stairs in her garage and came up with all the nitty gritty info for me. Happy-happy-joy-joy! She got it at Lowe's, it's made by Valspar, it's called Jalapeno Jelly ...etc. etc. etc. Well, we don't have a Lowe's within 100 miles of us but my local paint store carries Valspar so woo-hoo, I'm off to see the wizard!! No dice. Even with all the particulars, my paint gal doesn't have the right stuff to make the mix. We concluded that Lowe's probably has some exclusive colors from Valspar and, barring a 200 mile round trip, I was shit out of luck. *sigh* Back to the drawing board... I should mention also that I went to the Valspar website in hopes that I could eyeball the color on line and try to match it locally but the color they showed is NOTHING like what Wendall has -in fact she commented that if I got a can of that paint I shouldn't freak out until I saw it on the wall but what's on the website is definitely not a good representation of her paint. UGH! I'm tellin ya... paint is weird.

At some point in our "chatting" Wendall said she loves the color in her studio so much, sometimes she goes in there and wants to lick the walls -{who's the freak now?" LOL!} It doesn't surprise me though, because they're the exact same color as a granny smith apple -I'd probably be tempted to take a taste myself! ;) Soooo... with that in mind, bright and early the next morning I stopped by the grocery store and bought the yummiest granny apple I could find and headed for the paint store. The gals all got a kick out of me standing there matching paint chips up to my apple -lol! but hey, a gals got to do what a gals got to do, right?

I came home with 2 different quarts of paint -both of which are perfect matches to my granny apple. The first one, unfortunately named 'Asparagus', is a deeper green, like you see when you look down by the apple's stem, the second color, called 'Olive Garden', is a bit lighter like you'd see on the sides of the apple. I have both colors up on the wall now and it's a toss up, I like them both. The lighter color is nice, kinda mellow but fun. The darker color, is bold and fun and it's definitely different than anything I would have chosen without benefit of seeing something similar in Wendall's studio. I admit, when I saw first saw it up on my wall, my first thought was how much it looked like baby poop -you know, like when they first start eating green beans? *gag* but after a couple of coats and a couple of days of curing, it's definitely the front runner -pffftt- no pun intended!
LOL! I just realized you can see my 'inspiration' apple on my shelf!