Of all the color tools I have, Color Grid by Gail Callahan is probably the most unusual. It costs $7.95 plus $3.50 for shipping and handling, although the $3.50 will cover shipping up to four grids. Most of my color tools are cards or decks or color wheels. This one is a glossy-print grid with a viewer. In some ways, it is almost like a slide ruler. The grid has 12 colors based on the classic red-blue-yellow painter's color wheel. Pure hues run down the middle of the grid, with five tints above and five shades below. There are no tones. The viewfinder has a 3 by 3 grid of holes. The center hole is larger than the surrounding eight. And the viewer has a thin rectangular box. To use the tool, place the viewer on the grid, centering the large hole on the color that most closely matches your main color. The viewer then shows you surrounding colors that make a good analogous color scheme, as well as complementary colors way over on the other side of the colo...
A smaller set of cards designed to work with a specific product line is the Lunatic Fringe Yarns Playing with Color Cards . They cost $37.50 on the Lunatic Fringe website or can be found at some weaving supply shops. butter yellow on left; information side of yellow card on right This is a set of 44 cards that match the 44 colors (including greys) in Lunatic Fringe's Tubular Spectrum™ line of yarns. The cards are a nice large size (3¼ by 5⅛ inches, or 83mm by 130mm) and come in a metal tin with a clear window. There's also a paper insert explaining how to use the tool. That same information can be found here on their website. The first thing you are likely to notice is some colors have the number 10 and some have the number 5. As the insert explains, Tubular Spectrum is based on the Munsell Color Wheel , which has 5 primary colors and 5 secondary colors, resulting in a 20-color wheel. A color with a "5" is one of the primaries or secon...