Serve up a stylish table Bring nature home on a smaller scale than just your wall colour with these quick and quirky linen printing ideas. All it takes is a few Resene testpots, some simple ‘tools’ available in most kitchens and some plain napkins – we bought ours at Kmart. We used a bamboo fork to make frond patterns in Resene Kaitoke Green (paint the stem first with a paint brush), as well as the end of a straw dipped in Resene Snow Drift, and a cut apple dipped in Resene Spring Rain. Resene Spring Rain Resene Toffee Resene Kaitoke Green Resene Snow Drift top tip  To use your own nature photos for inspiration, load them into the Resene Colour Palette Generator and it will suggest some Resene colours for you to help get you started.  See www.resene.com/ palettegenerator. – aside from the most vibrant flowers, bluest skies or glowing sunsets, natural colours are soft and muted not clear and bright. Nature-inspired schemes aren’t just brown and green. There are many more aspects of nature from which to take your cue – flowers of any hue, high- country tussock, rivers, clay, grey river pebbles, apple- skin reds, mountains or volcanos with their bright azure crater lakes, sunrises and sunsets. And of course, our vast stretches of coastline offer a wealth of inspiration – white sand, black sand, sea, surf, shells and seaweed. Work on texture and tone Colours in nature are rarely just one tone. You may see a flower as pink but look closer and there will be variations of pink, from outer older petals through to the pearlescent throat of the flower. The same can be said of bark, rock, earth, leaves… anything really. And few natural objects are one texture. Think rough earth, knubby bark, smooth river pebbles, glossy leaves, satiny petals, glimmering shells… in fact, include a few found objects as accessories. Twigs in a vase, shells in a bowl or rough stones lined up on the mantelpiece – it’s decorating for free. If your earthy scheme is looking too drab, check that you have the texture levels right. Try for three different types, say a jute rug, a translucent glass vase and a weathered timber coffee table. Natural schemes don’t have to be rustic and earthy; they can also be elegant or architectural.