Color my world

Sometimes, the impetus to paint boils down to economics: Homeowners can increase curb appeal in a tight real estate market by painting.
According to a recent Home Gain survey of 2,000 Realtors, lightening your walls can bring as much as a $1,000 increase in your price -- a 769 percent return on the cost of painting a room, according to Black & Decker.
So, what are color experts saying is "in"?
Don't look for common terms such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Marketing departments add zest to these spectrum standbys.
Names include, respectively, burning love, sorto, solstice, crocodile tears, star spangled, forget-me-not and blackberry jam.
Yellow is increasingly popular. Benjamin Moore & Co. touts its "zesty citron yellow" with a touch of green, called St. Elmo's Fire 362.
"Yellow radiates pure warmth and energy like no other color," Benjamin Moore spokeswoman Eileen McComb said. "A luminous tone like St. Elmo's Fire projects a sophisticated, intimate personality and is suggestive of freshness."
Working in its favor, McComb said, is its hint of green.
"It must work well with neighboring colors," she said. "It's that hint of green that is the key to its compatibility with other hues."
Yellow has come a long way since the days it was isolated in the kitchen.
"While it's still an ideal choice for that space, it now is equally acceptable to apply it anywhere and everywhere throughout the home," McComb said.
White walls "are pretty much out of the picture," said Bradley Veneklase, associate broker for Parkland Properties, which operates Union Square and The Boardwalk condominiums in downtown Grand Rapids.

Fresh paint can increase the value of a house

Maybe it's the post-summer doldrums or a race to get ready for holiday entertaining, but color experts say more people paint their homes in October than any other month.
Whether inside or outside, cooler temperatures, sunny skies and mild breezes to dissipate fumes make October ideal for painting.
With thousands of colors and styles available, selecting the right look for a room or entryway often takes longer than the project itself. Consider these things:
RESOURCES
• For what's new in color trends and styles, visit prattandlambert.com.
• Looking for textures and patterns? Visit valspar.com.
• A good source for information on painting the house, including how much paint to use is the Rohm and Haas Paint Quality Institute at paintquality.com/index.html.
• To see new products to make painting easier, visit shurline.com.
• The October/November issue of Fine Homebuilding Magazine explores the quality of paints. See it online at taunton.com/finehomebuilding/design.
• In addition to colors, be it cowslip 4 (yellow) or ivy wreath (green), there also are textures. Selections include venetian plaster, brushed suede, metallic, granite crystals and anything that starts with "faux."
• Behr, Valspar and Benjamin Moore offer online assistance and interactive help in picking paint. The "Never Compromise" Color System from Pratt & Lambert Paints includes ways to decorate with 1,056 colors.
• Painting tools have been updated, including painter's tape, brushes, rollers and items that eliminate the need for painter's tape.
• A trim tool and tray combo from Zibra (enjoyzibra.com) eliminates the need for tape, while a roller tool ejects paint-laden roller sleeves with the press of a button.
• Paint rollers coated with Teflon may cut painting time by 30 percent and make clean-up easier. Teflon-coated products from Newell Rubbermaid Co.'s Shur-Line division increase roller paint pick-up and release. Paint cleans easier from Teflon-coated rollers, so it's less tempting to throw it out.
• There's an interior design tool called the E-Z Decorator System to help you create quality designs and see what they'll look like before paint touches the wall (ezdecorator.com).
• Obnoxious paint fumes have decreased steadily with government regulations limiting the release of volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs.
Now you can buy paint with no VOCs. ICI Paints North America says its Freshaire Choice paint has no VOCs in the base or colorant (thefreshairechoicepaint.com).

Beautifully modest

In an 820-square-foot space in West Dearborn, Mich., amid a jeweler, a shoe repair and a spa, Samaher Mohammad walks among garments of silk and organza, chiffon and crinoline.
She touches the tulle of a kimono-inspired abaya, an everyday Islamic dress, and the embroidery of a thoub, a formal Islamic dress.
Over days and weeks and months, the 27-year-old designed these gowns, dresses of lace and beading and Swarovski crystals - Arab in their array of color, Islamic in their modesty and American in their silhouette.
They exude fun and creativity yet mesh with the conservative standards sought by many Arab-American Muslims like her. (She veers away, for instance, from hemlines that rise too high or necklines that plunge too far.)
Her repository consists of about 30 gowns, made with fabric from Jordan to Kashmir, which she used to launch the grand opening of her store in August.
With each stitch, Mohammad has woven in a part of herself. The magenta and turquoise and fuchsia reflect the colorful Mediterranean culture of her family's heritage. The embroidered patterns hint at distinct Arabic geometry and calligraphy.
"My culture," she says, "is embedded in my designs. I get inspired by who I am."
Zaynini, the store's name, means "make me beautiful" in Arabic, which is exactly how Mohammad wants women to feel when they slip on her gowns.
Mohammad knows that, given the state of the local economy, it's not the most auspicious time to launch a new business, but she speaks with a friendly, direct confidence.

Isabelle de Borchgrave's paper dresses

They take hours and hours to make, and then, when they're finally finished, you can't even wear them. Welcome to the eccentric world of Isabelle de Borchgrave, an artist who creates exquisite replicas of historical dresses, with one material difference - they're paper. By Eithne Farry
Tucked away behind an unassuming double-garage door on a quiet street in Brussels is the beguilingly obsessive world of the artist Isabelle de Borchgrave. Her studio, a big cluttered space with dim light and concrete floors, is dominated by a group of exquisitely dressed mannequins. One is wearing an Elizabethan gown in rich chocolate brown and cream with old gold detailing, baroque pearl clusters and age-worn lace cuffs and ruff. There's a Madonna figure from a Lippi painting draped in a full, blue cloak and red gown, and a dapper page-boy tricked out in a cape of dark brocade with a matching hat. And a larger-than-life figure wearing an ornate wedding dress in taupe silk-taffeta, sprinkled with pearls. They are remarkable costumes, beautifully constructed - and made entirely out of paper.

De Borchgrave, in complete contrast to her ornate work, is dressed in a simple blue top and trousers, her hair an unruly mix of short curls. She darts over to the long worktable that runs down the centre of the studio and plucks a piece of white paper from a pile. 'It all starts from this,' she says. This is not an expensive sheet of deluxe parchment from a Parisian papeterie, but a rustling scrap of pattern paper that you could pick up for a couple of pounds in the John Lewis haberdashery department. It takes de Borchgrave and her assistants 'hours and hours and hours' of painting, playing, scrunching, gilding and gluing to transform plain paper into a dress that evokes a red, pleated Fortuny Delphos dress or a trompe l'œil Marie Antoinette gown. 'It's magic,' de Borchgrave says, 'a dream.'
The atmosphere in the studio is, indeed, one of dreamy industry. One of de Borchgrave's assistants is painstakingly constructing a pair of boots with layer upon layer of paper, while another is printing a 'shower of hail spots' on to three and a half metres of lens-cleaning paper. 'It's a veil to go with the wedding dress,' Dora explains, as she stencils the spots on with a roller. The veil is light and pretty with painted scalloped edges, but it's not exactly practical.