The colors of Halloween and a new Zazzle store

Photo by marykbaird

Halloween: it's a holiday observed on October 31, the eve of All Saints' Day. Its pagan origins can be traced to the Celtic festival of Samhain. This festival was celebrated in ancient England and Ireland to mark the beginning of the Celtic new year. 
The colors of Halloween are warm, bright, fun, and spooky! The color symbolism makes us associate black with death, night, witches, black cats, bats, vampires. The color orange makes us think about pumpkins, jack o' lanterns, and Autumn. In the Autumn the leaves on trees change to warm colors like red, orange, brown, and yellow. The color purple is about the supernatural and mysticism. Green and red are also prominent in modern Halloween images and products. Green is about monsters and goblins and red is about blood and evil. 

The credit for beginning the holiday as a festival of the harvest was given to the Celtics. Golden and orange are colors that can easily be associated with harvest culture. The celebration of death and the supernatural was central to this ancient Festival. The black color is often associated with the absence of light or darkness. Samhain was an after sunset celebration. This is a possible explanation for the origin of Halloween colors. For more information about Halloween read this article by Rick Branch and James Walker or Google it!

This time of the year is a time of change. The silly season ends and people get ready to take life more seriously.I always feel sad that I have to say goodbye to the good weather and to summer late afternoons in the beach. Autumn is a time to restart with the old routines and even to start new projects. And so did I. I had a rough year. One of the consequences of it was months without creating new products for my old Zazzle store. 

Finally, it's time for a comeback and I decided to open a new Zazzle store. This is the blog for that store. As you may already know by knowing this Zazzle store is called No Boring White. It wasn't easy to find a name! I created the store in February but the opening was constantly delayed until now. It has been almost two weeks since I started and it has not been easy to pick up the old routines and face all the changes that Zazzle undergoes in recent months. I feel rusty and all I see ahead it's lots and lots of work and maybe little return. As some of you know all my designs and illustrations are created by myself. Like many other fellow Zazzlers I do not use clipart or any other graphic artist's work. The creative process is slow and not easy. The next step will be to upload and tag all the work. This is time-consuming and boring. After that comes the promotion of the store and products. It's a never-ending job! 

So why create a new store? Why not stick to the ones I already have, Papelustro and A Portuguese Love? My idea is to keep A Portuguese Love for Portuguese theme-related products only. I also have some hope that this store boosts my creativity in a different way than A Portuguese Love or Papelustro could not. And it will be easy to market the products if I keep it separate. But starting again almost from zero it has been complicated. On the other hand, it has been good to get back in touch with some fellow Zazzlers. I cherish the support they gave me in the past and the recent warm welcomes. And for now, that's it! I invite you all to follow me on this new adventure. Welcome to No Boring White!