Coloring My World....

I recently attended the Craft & Hobby Association trade show in Chicago. It is a wholesale show, mainly for manufacturers to showcase their new products and for retail craft businesses to buy for their stores.

While waiting to cross the street, I noticed that fourteen of the twenty people standing with me were wearing either all black or black and white (myself included). I found it kind of interesting because this is a gathering of people whose businesses are all about creativity and who buy pencils, paper, paint, inks, ribbons, etc., in every color they come in. I got to thinking about why I wear mostly black and thought of other creative people, like Donna Karan, Michael Kors, and Karl Lagerfeld, who all dress in almost only black. For myself, I wear black because it is easy. I know I will look neat and professional without a lot of fuss. As I thought of the designers mentioned above, I thought that maybe they dress in black so they can save their creative energies for their work, not wanting to spend a drop of it on their own attire. I once described myself as a visual contradiction - wearing black on the outside while thinking in rainbows underneath.

My trip to Chicago was followed by six days in Las Vegas - I decided to spend part of my stay in search of colorful things to photograph... here's what I found, starting with breakfast...

I love room service breakfast. And I love it even more when there are fresh flowers on the table, even if they are humble chrysthanthemums! My room service breakfast at the Aria in Las Vegas arrived with these sunny flowers. What a lovely way to start my day (by the way, the Aria is fabulous - the bed is like a huge poufy marshmallow - you won't want to leave it!).

Later in the week, I roamed around in search of colorful things to photograph. The windows of the boutique at The Paris held these beautiful dresses. It was an eye catching display of gorgeous dresses in happy colors. Makes me want to have a fancy party just so I have a reason to buy one for myself.
These colored almonds at the Jean Philippe Pastry shop at the Aria - they reminded me of the dresses in the window. The store was also full of colorful cakes and candies (all which would make it difficult to fit into the dresses shown above, lol). They were beautiful to look at though!

I headed over to The Bellagio for a visit to their fabulous garden atrium. I've been there a few times and the floral display is always amazing. Gigantic glass poppies towered over gardens filled with golden dwarf sunflowers, blue salvia, cherry red impatiens and bromeliads with red, yellow, purple & hot pink blooms. What caught my attention there, however, was the subtle colors of the succulent gardens - the gray blue greens with touches of pinkish lavender. Even the rocks behind them are full of color, though they appear just gray at first glance.

Later, I visited the lobby at The Bellagio and its breathtaking ceiling installation of Chilhuly glass flowers - hundreds of them in every imaginable color. It is really impossible to do it justice in a photograph but here's as good an example as I could manage.

These are but a few of the hundreds of photos I took as I searched for color in Las Vegas... I'm sure that some element of these photos will show up in a future quilt or collage project.

I'm back home now, still dressing in black but thinking in rainbows...