Colourful

I love color. I’m not one of those people who needs a riot of mismatched colors on and around them at all times (a la Ugly Betty) but neutrals and only neutrals will, after a while, drive me bonkers. Consequently, when I get a little bored with my life, the third thing I want to do is paint a room. (The first thing is cut my hair and the second is move furniture, in case you were wondering.)

I usually wear black t-shirts, jeans, and a bright pink belt to work. No matter what else I’m wearing, I carry either a red or pastel rainbow striped purse. After years of debating dying some of my hair purple, my stylist finally bought me some purple clip-ins to use at my discretion. When David made me a bag for my church stuff, we had to compromise on the color. He wanted to use subdued grays, and I wanted bright blue. The bag is gray with a bright blue stripe. It matches practically none of my church clothes and I love it.

I have zero pairs of brown “dress” shoes but I’ve got plenty of colorful ones. I just realized, though, I could use some purple, pink, and orange heels to round the collection out a bit. Also, please excuse the lack of baseboards. It is being remedied this week.

I like my colors* to be bright and unexpected, but in moderation. I’m not an exhibitionist AT ALL–I’m rather the opposite–so dying all my hair purple would be completely out of character for me. But a chunk of purple? A removable chunk of purple? Totally doable. I also wouldn’t paint the exterior of my house fuschia, but I wouldn’t (and didn’t) hesitate to paint my kitchen a bold shade of blue. It’s all about knowing where and when and how much of which colors to use, and then just going for it.

I only share all this so you’ll understand why I was elated to find this website. The Let’s Colour Project is, in their own words, “a worldwide initiative…to transform grey spaces with colourful paint.” These people go into communities–in France, Brazil, Turkey, India, and the UK thus far–and cover drab concrete and brick with oranges and pinks and golds and blues and purples and every other bright happy color under the sun. They’re much more bold than I could ever hope to be, but their ideas certainly resonate with me.

It’s quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of. It makes me want to take buckets of paint into ghetto Phoenix and have at it. I’m thinking, though, that people wouldn’t appreciate a crazy white girl painting their apartment/office buildings obnoxious colors without permission, so I will restrain myself.

I know some people are afraid to use color with reckless abandon, and some just don’t like it. I don’t get that. I’m with the founders of this project. I say, let’s colour.

* My first impulse when writing this sentence was to finish it thusly: “I like my colors like I like my coffee….covered in bees!” Which makes no sense whatsoever. Unless, of course, you know the clip to which I am referring, in which case it is HILARIOUS.