Colour Palette of the Month - December!

I love colour and find it really hard to work with neutrals and monochromatic palettes.  It's strange then, that in this monochromatic snowy and frosty landscape I'm beginning to adjust!

Monday morning, this week, was really frosty in the Trent Valley and I couldn't help but take this photograph at 8.30 while out for our morning walk.

When I downloaded the image from my Blackberry I was really taken with the lovely rich browns, creams and apricots,  moving me to use it as my palette for December and as my Seasonal Greetings card.  It puts a new twist on winter colours!  It's certainly not winter white, is it?


Dyeing the lovely rich colours would be a challenge and I think I'd use cutch (Thar) or sappenwood (Garden) with iron water for the browns and cutch for the apricot shade, with oak gall for the cream.  What would you use?

Lodhra Bark/Oak Gall

Despite stringent controls I've found that I've been sent oak gall instead of lodhra bark by the manufacturer. This mistake will have occured because they insist that I use Trade Names rather than the plant name!

If you've found that your lodhra bark gives a pale cream colour instead of the lovely orange, please let me know and I'll replace it free of charge and post free.

If you're not sure which is which a rather crude description of lodhra bark is that the extract looks like brown sweepings from the floor while oak gall looks like a yellow brown powder.

I'm so sorry this has happened and will ensure that it doesn't happen again.

Best wishes

Alison