Scientifically speaking, monochromatic light refers to light of a narrow frequency. Similarly, monochromatic colour schemes use variations in lightness and saturation of a single or narrow section of the colour wheel. Monochrome schemes are, perhaps, the simplest to create as they’re all taken from the same hue, but they can, in turn, be overwhelming or even boring, depending on the colour chosen.
No other colour scheme depends so much on the mood created by a single colour as a monochromatic scheme. Blue is peaceful and calming, yellow projects happiness, green symbolises both nature or jealousy and so on.
The downfall with a monochrome colour scheme is that it can sometimes lack brilliance and contrast, but the upside is that a contrasting photograph will ‘pop’ beautifully against a single colour background.
Sue Tonga was excited when she was given the brief of creating a monochromatic layout. She thought it was going to be easy! But it was actually more of a challenge than she realised. Sue chose to design a layout with turquoise and used several different MME papers to build up the layers. Although it was very tempting to add in embellishments with a little colour, Sue stuck to the shades of turquoise to complement her Easter photos.
Janine loved creating this layout from luscious layers of pink! When you are a girly girl, a monochromatic pink LO is a little slice of heaven! Janine used quite a few techniques to create this pink creation, from stamping with a pink pigment ink and embossing with clear powder to allow the pink ink to show through, to masking with Tim Holtz distress ink and a Prima mask. Glimmer misting the laces allowed those to be customised for the page also, to fit with the monochromatic colour scheme.
