There is a decided lack of color in my life as of late. This has been very much in evidence over the past few days as we’ve not seen the sun in almost a week. We’ve had gray, cloudy, Oregon-coast like weather, unseasonably cool, but blessedly wet (we’re in a drought right now. We need the rain!). It seems as if this blandness in colors has been carried into my life.

I guess it’s obvious that this site is rather bland – pale, vague hints at colors, if that. The yellow in the background is muted, and the rest of the colors are various shades of grey, with the exception of the links. We’re doing better in our real-world life; we have some nice reds in the house – but our bedroom has white walls, and my basement has light brown wall paper. Nothing exciting, nothing invigorating. I want something that pops!

I’ve been a member over at ColourLovers for some time, and I enjoy creating palettes. I wonder how some of my favorites would look in either a website, or as a color combination down in my basement or my bedroom;

While this one has browns, it has the nice contrasting blue in it as well. Might look good on a site, probably not so much in my basement or in my bedroom (unless I did the walls in a light tan and got all new linens in blue for my bed).

The greens are nice in this, and I think they contrast nicely with the grays, but again I think it’d be better for the website than a bedroom. In my basement, I might think I was in a fish tank.

Just kidding…

Some nice browns and oranges here, but again, I see it more of a website color than a bedroom color. The basement would be brightened considerable done in an orange.

This one I could see on both – on a website it has the nice neutral colors, with good contrast, nothing to bland or dull in my opinion. I would also put these colors in my bedroom or basement, more likely the lighter shades on the wall.

Some color links:

• ColourLovers
• Color Wizard
• Color Scheme Generator
• Color Palette Generator
• Color Jack
• Kuler

That’s just a few – there’s tons out there. And as you can see from my palette selects, I suck at colors. I need help.

I like to mess in Photoshop, but I’ve not been able to in awhile. We had Photoshop CS3 here at work, but because of a snafu in licensing issues, I had to go back to CS, which quite frankly, is probably more than I actually need. Want is a different matter all together.

While reading Valerie’s site, I found a picture of a trowel she’d taken*. I thought it was a not only an interesting picture, but one that I could mess with in Photoshop a bit, and see what I could come up with.

I decide to orientate it going from lower left to upper right, and then used Curves, Levels, Brightness & Contrast and the Burn tool to bring out some of the highlights, as well as color correction to bring out more of the red in the bricks. I liked how blue the metal of the trowel came out.

It’s mostly just a fun experiment. Unfortunately, the monitor here at work sucks balls and the color isn’t the best on it. I’ve noticed when I’ve gone home and looked at stuff on my monitors at home (most noticeably, my palettes from colourlovers.com) that the colors are all wonky. I’m hoping to get a new LCD here at work eventually – but I’m not holding my breath.

*naturally, the copyright for the picture goes to Valerie herself

As mentioned before, I’ve been trying to come up with a new layout for my journal here, without much luck. I’ve had several goes, and thought I’d share what I’ve come up with. I wouldn’t mind hearing your thoughts on any of them, whether good or bad. Each pictures links to slightly bigger version so you can get the gist of the whole layout.

First up is one I worked on for awhile. I like the leafy design of the logo as it was actually kind of what I was going for. But the rest of it felt flat. The light purple bar the logo is sitting on top of extends most of the way down the page and would be the sidebar.

Next is another green one, this one more of a marble type. I liked the subtleties of it, but again, something just wasn’t clicking with me and I moved on.

This next one was more of me just goofing around with the ‘S’ and ‘P’ for a possible Shad’s Pad logo, and then wondering if I could make a layout with it. I was thinking a centered one, which was unique, as I believe all the ones I’m showcasing here were more on the left.

 Here was my venture into “Web 2.0″ territory. Gotta have glossy logos to qualify for Web 2.0! I didn’t have a beta badge though, so it failed the test.

 A ‘59 Cadillac is the theme for this one, along with yet another type of logo. I kind of liked the logo as I thought the subtle curly brace that the SP makes was clever, but it’s still to much 1980’s cheese for me. And I should never try and be clever.

 Finally, here’s yet another orange/gray layout that I actually played with for quite a bit before giving up. I even had a color palette I’d made up for it. Once again, however, it just failed to really grab on to me and say “use me!” There’s a joke in there about needing a woman to do that to me, but I’m not grasping it.

 Like I said, I’d welcome any and all comments you might have. Perhaps if enough people like a certain one, I’ll move to that and continue to try and improve on it. And, naturally, right before this post, I was working on yet ANOTHER layout.

God, I need a life.

I’ve been trying to create a new layout for my site here, and failing spectacularly. Trying to come up with a decent logo/color combination has been tedious and depressing. Simply put, I suck.

There needs to be a “Design Eye for the Shad Web” type of tutorial or something. I can’t do anything right. Color combos, logo design, layout — They all suck right now. I need Martin or Sarah to design me a new “Shad’s Pad” logo. I’ll pay them in Jelly Bellys.

I’ve been looking at sites in CSS Remix and CSS Beauty, as well as CSS Vault and the CSS Zen Garden, hopefully for inspiration. I’ve found a lot of nice sites that I like, but I don’t want to copy them. So instead of inspiration, I find discouragement instead.

OK, pity party over. Back to your regularly scheduled surfing. Hopefully I’ll have something more entertaining than the default soon.

There’s gonna be some changes around here over the next few days as I get a chance to poke n’ prod at the site. So don’t be surprised to see a totally fubar’d layout now and then. I mean, c’mon, you know it wouldn’t be a Shad undertaking if I didn’t hork things up now and again.