Below is an article on the color wheel. There are also a few links, after the article, regarding the wheel.
How do you choose the colors in your scrapbook papers?
Introduction to the Color Wheel Have
you ever noticed the tremendous impact that color itself can have on
your scrapbook pages? Color can make a page have a "mood." A brightly
colored page may look happy. A page done in pastel colors could remind
you of a baby. Or, putting dark colors on a page could make it look too
dreary for the pictures.
Colors have their own personalities and
strengths. In consideration of these personalities and strengths, colors
of paper and embellishments used on your scrapbook pages can either
complement or
compete with those photos of your precious memories. Colors can also complement or compete with the other colors on the page!
Knowing
how to choose and use color on your scrapbook pages just might be the
most fundamental resource to successful scrapbooking. Fortunately, once
you know the "rules" of color, it isn’t very hard.
In this article,
we will discuss the basics of color, the color wheel, and terminology of
color. These are important to understand because your scrapbook pages
are made using dyes and pigment colors, and colors give consistent
results when mixed. These consistent results will also be applicable to
layers of vellum, if of appropriate thickness; as well as paints,
chalks, and other coloring media that can be mixed. The basics of how
colors work will give you a solid foundation of familiarity for learning
the "rules" of color. The color wheel helps us understand how all the
pieces fit together, and the terminology gives us even more competency
in the variations of colors.
1. The Color Wheel The
color wheel is like a rainbow that has been made into a circle to show
how all the colors work together and are made from each other. Small
color wheels are quite inexpensive, so if you don’t have one, I highly
recommend getting one! This is a valuable asset to learning and
understanding the nuances of color. My favorite is the
Pocket Color Wheel, available online and at craft store.
2. The Colors With pigments and paints, there are six "basic" colors. The first three are the
Primary Colors. You may like to think of these as the "original colors." The
Primaries are
Red, Yellow, and
Blue. They are the original Primary Colors because you cannot mix other colors to get the Primaries. You
musthave
Red paint to get Red. You cannot make Red from any of the other colors.
The same goes for Yellow and Blue. Additionally, Red, Yellow and Blue
are the foundational colors from which all other colors are mixed.
The
color wheel shows how all the other colors are made from the Primary
colors. When you combine the Primary Colors of Red, Yellow and Blue, you
can make new colors called the
Secondary Colors. These are completely new colors, so they have totally new names. The
Secondary Colors are
Orange, Green, and
Violet. If you take a
Secondary color and mix it with a
Primary, you get a
Tertiary Color. The names of these colors are:
Red-Violet, Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green,and
Blue-Violet.. 
You
will notice that the names of the Tertiary colors are the names of the
Primary and Secondary colors that were mixed to make them, always
beginning with the name of the Primary Color and ending with the name of
the
Secondary
Color. These are all the basic colors. You can make variations of these
colors, but from here there are no new colors on the color wheel.
3. Neutral Colors and Color Variation Terminology The
Neutral Colors are
Black, White and
Gray.
They are not on the color wheel because they are neutral and
independent from the Primary Colors. Neutral Colors coordinate with all
colors. Neutral Colors do not "clash" with any colors. Neutral Colors
also do not "make" any "new" colors by mixing them together. Neutral
Colors
do produce variations of existing colors.
LINKS TO COLOR WHEELhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colorshttp://kuler.adobe.com/?sdid=MNJS##
http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-schemes.htmlContributor Heather Gibbs, Heather's Scrapbook's
