Amethyst and the color purple

I just opened the September '09 issue of  House Beautiful and discovered the color amethyst  in their Everywhere We Look column. 

I just finished my living room with this amethyst metallic silk texture with a damask stencil done in a tone-on-tone. The walls were first painted cream. I then added the amethyst texture panels and made them into "framed" pieces with small moldings.

TaaDaa! I now have artwork. Some I will leave as is, some will receive our collected art pieces. 

 Before the molding:

The finished walls:

Turns out that the folks in Pompei in the first century also liked the color amethyst. This photo is of a wall from Pompei (now in the Met):

 

Also in the same issue, there was an interesting article called "Confessions of a House Painter" on page 56.  His answers were spot on!