I don’t know about anyone else, but sometimes I find it really hard to match colours. Or, once I’ve chosen colours, I find it hard to then arrange them in a nice way. I find it particularly hard to arrange things so they look random. For example, I was trying to lay out my granny squares for my big crochet blanket but was having trouble. I solve this by using a random number generator, giving each pile of the same colours a number, and then putting them in that order. A couple looked out of place, so I swapped them round, but overall it made the job much easier.

Here is a roundup of tools that I’ve found that make creating colour schemes or arranging colours a much simpler task. I use them for all sorts of crafting this as well as web design, so they’re useful for many different purposes. Hopefully you’ll find them useful too.

Colour Schemes

• Color Scheme Designer – Allows you a lot of control over colour schemes, and as well as main colours gives you matching shades
• Design Seeds – Uses inspirational pictures, and takes the main colours from them

Arranging Colour

• Granny Square Color Pattern Generator – Put in the width, height and number of colours in each square. Pick the colours, and it will generate a complete layout for you
• Random Stripe Generator – Select your colours, widths allowed and number of stripes and it will generate a completely random layout for you
• Stripe Generator – A more advanced stripe generator which gives you more choice than the previous option

If you have any other useful tools please comment and I’ll add them to the list.