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It pays to be nice to people. A local applicator here in New Mexico recently dropped these off for me to use in the color room. It's a full Pantone color deck and a Benjamin Moore  Pocket Palette Spectrophotometer. (Talk about a mouthful - Pull that one out of your back pocket during the next family trivia game!) Together, these are worth somewhere in the ballpark of $400-500. He offered them to us after we provided assistance in a pinch during one of his American Clay jobs.

All morning long, Oscar (our warehouse manager) and I have been running around the office aiming the pocket palette at clay walls and seeing how close it is in identifying paint matches. It's a pretty neat tool. A huge thanks to our American Clay family of clients for our give-and-take relationship. We appreciate all your help!

This week's color request came from inside of American Clay. Our awesome salesperson, Jacquie, was walking through my room one day and asked if I could combine Jasper and Tucson Gold. Happy to oblige, I blended them together in a ratio equivalent to one color pack of each per bag of Loma, Porcelina, or Marittimo. The resulting color was a beautiful, fresh green. Not sure how to describe it, we tossed around "citrus", "grass", and finally "jade". (Croft doesn't think this looks like Jade, because there are so many possible color variations! He's right, but I still liked it best.) It seems all of these names could probably work...What do you think?

For comparison, this color is most similar to Sherwin Williams 6409 Edgy Gold:

Image Source: Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer

Please forgive the blurriness of the above photo - I struggled all of Friday afternoon to figure out how to do a screenshot, and this one is less than impressive. Hope it's still helpful in conveying an overall sense of the color.

As always, we welcome your feedback and requests for new combinations of our standard colors! I'm already scoping out a combination for next week!

Today I received a package from one of our dealers, shipped with biodegradable packing peanuts. This provided some comic relief after a busy week - Croft saw these and remarked that they were made of potato starch, and popped one in his mouth to demonstrate how quickly they dissolve! This comes after I overheard Shaylor yesterday telling an applicator to buff their waxed Porcelina wall with pantyhose. My coworkers are a definite source of comic relief...

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Due in large part to our clients, my sources of inspiration seem endless. An applicator, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , from Idaho recently emailed me with images of some of her American Clay work, and I felt compelled to share them here. I'm always fascinated by the way our materials are interpreted by different people. While there are instructions provided that help ensure the best chances of success, plenty of you have pushed the limits and created new and unusual installations not detailed in our trainings or tutorials.

Here are some photos provided by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it :

American Clay on canvas

Freehand fresco drawing on American Clay

Additionally, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it passed along a photo she took in Puerto Rico during a visit last year (see below), and she hopes to recreate this effect in her own home. I'm curious - What products and approach would you take to achieve this look? (HEADS UP! This may show up in a future blog post.)

Thanks for taking the time to read. What inspires your work? I hope you'll share...