Finding Froonie's Color

     Over the course of a couple weeks, I began to play around with creating Froonie's custom pink color.  Yes, that's right, I said PINK!  This sailboat, my first restoration, is named after my daughter (her nickname), and will be her boat.  So, I asked Skylar which color she would like to have adorn the topsides of her sailboat...yep, just what any 5-year old girl would say, "pink, daddy!"  "Seriously, Skylar?", I would question her every so often.  "Yep, pink dad."  Okay, pink it is!!

     I began with purchasing Interlux Brightsides Red Fire and Matterhorn White.  If you have been following this restoration from the beginning, or have read through my posts, you will have noticed that I had always planned for Interlux Perfection paint application.  Well, I succumbed to the badgering of my imaginary accountant, I chose a less expensive paint application.  Brightsides is a one part polyurethane that has good UV and abrasion resistance and takes to rolling and tipping quite well.  Plus, I used Brightsides on portions of the interior (just rolling on without tipping off), and the results were quite amazing.  For these reasons, I chose Brightsides.

     I confiscated an old pool water test kit, emptied out a couple small squeeze bottles and filled with an ounce each of the Red Fire and the Matterhorn White.  I then proceeded to mix at varying ratios, creating different shades of pink.  A little red goes a loooooong way here, so most of the mixes included one drop of red to varying amounts of white.  The squeeze bottles worked really well, as they provided consistency in the development of custom blends.  After producing a number of blends, I decided that the lighter pinks (the lighter shades were decided upon) had too much of a grey undertone.  The Matterhorn White paint has a grey undertone to it, and it was not producing an attractive color.

     I turned to another Brightsides white: Blue-Glo White.  This white is a brilliant white, and produced much better results after mixing a few blends.  Again, I used the dropper bottles to find a good ratio and satisfying color for Skylar's Froonie.  After intense deliberation with the girl :) she chose the 30:1 ratio....good choice Froon!  ::Pumpkins courtesy of Skylar Milby::