Creating your own palette of Christmas colors is really very easy.  There are many online tutorials (here’s one) to help you create a custom palette so I won’t re-invent the wheel but did you know that there was a website called COLOURlovers.com and that they have thousands of color/palette combinations from which to choose to make your own custom Christmas palettes?  I didn’t think so!  All the hard work of trying to find pleasing color combinations is done for you.

I did a search (use the Keywords box) on Christmas and literally hundreds of color palette combinations came up.  To narrow your search you can also select a “hue.”

Now getting those color swatches can be a bit tedious but with Photoshop you can actually sample colors from anywhere on your screen which means you don’t have to save/open each image to get the color.

Last tip!
Ok. And this one is one of my FAVORITE TIPS!!
Did you know that your eye dropper tool can be used to sample color anywhere on your screen? You can even sample colors online!! WOOHOO!! To use this little trick. Reduce your Photoshop window so you can see a part of your screen, but still technically be in Photoshop. Click on the eyedropper tool and then click anywhere inside your open photo/layout. Then, without letting go of your mouse; you can drag your eyedropper tool to anywhere else on your screen and sample color anywhere. Pretty Slick.”

I picked this tip up from Photoshop Tips and Tricks.  It works really well if you have dual monitors like I do.

My Christmas clipboard is finished and although it didn’t turn out anything like that tutorial promised it would, it still is pretty.  *smile*  I did learn that I’m hopeless at painting (had to quickly put it in the utility tub and scrub it clean before the paint dried) and glueing (had to try to scrape off the cardstock and then put it in the utility sink and scrub it clean…man, that’s one clean clipboard!).  The third time I just applied the textured cardstock (with a very, very thin layer of glue) and some pretties and ribbon.   Simple always seems to work best for me.  I’ll post a photo later.