COLOUR STORIES - How a shade comes to life · Sep 29, 2022

COLOUR STORIES - How a shade comes to life: Dusty Rose

Does anyone remember our shade Rosybrown? It was an Eliv Rosenkranz classic and was quite a popular colour in our early days. But with the discontinuation of powder pigments we didn’t reproduce it. Then, in 2020, we mixed a terracotta for a customer order. When experimenting I mixed orange with black - two different berry tones were the result, which we called “Strawberry” and “Blueberry” at the time (it was summer). And there was our foundation for the mood of what would later become Dusty Rose.

Born out of earthy berry tones

“Strawberry” and “Blueberry” were never widely advertised, but they were a hit in our experiment bundles. So when it came to decide which colours would be declared Custom Colours, the decision was easy: I optimised the recipe, kept the basic colours orange and black remained and changed the name to Dusty Rose.

A real challenge to reproduce

But then came the challenge: The pigment pastes didn’t yield consistent outcomes, we could never predict whether we would get a dark or light result. Dusty Rose was especially tricky in that regard and kept us struggling. When we switched to our current pigments, we decided that the lighter version was the one. This time I was able to determine the ratio of red, yellow and black myself and to elevate the formula of the colour again.

Everything was pretty and ready but then – the colour just wasn’t very popular in 2021. It’s only since this year, 2022, that it’s popularity started to rise. And we know why: it’s the romantic pink tone everyone wanted but it’s a bit muted, so it still represents the Eliv Rosenkranz spirit.