It's been a colorful life for the girl from Idalou, Texas.

Of course, Janie Lowe didn't plan on becoming a co-owner of a company that would get buzz on design blogs for a hot new eco-friendly interior and exterior house paint.

Ross Hailey / McClatchy Tribune (ENLARGE)

Yolo Colorhouse's no-VOC Water 07 paint offers good coverage over color and creamy consistency.

RELATED: • Compare eco-friendly paint brands • Paint company eliminates chemical odors • See more Home stories

Lowe just wanted to be an artist as she was growing up in the tiny town 12 miles east of Lubbock.

In the late 1980s, with a fine arts degree from Texas Tech, Lowe headed to New York and the School of Visual Arts for her master's degree.

"I am a fine art painter, but back then my focus was illustration." Lowe says. For two years, she worked as an illustrator in New York.

Still, she was a Westerner at heart, and freelance life in the city was a grind.

Lowe headed west to Portland, Ore. She freelanced. She taught art. She worked as a decorative painter, creating faux finishes on homeowners' interior walls.

"A few years into it I started feeling the effects of working with paint," Lowe says. She'd get sore throats and headaches.

She and another fine artist turned faux-painter, Virginia Young, started researching old paint recipes. They looked at paints made from clay and paints made from milk. They researched the toxicity of modern paint and studied paint performance.

Finally, in 2005, with four employees, Young and Lowe launched Yolo Colorhouse paint. "We started from the ground up being a green company. In every decision we make, we consider our impact on the environment," Lowe says.

Yolo paint's labels are 100 percent post-consumer waste and are printed with soy-based ink.

The paint can is made from 100 percent recycled plastic. Color swatches are printed on poster-size paper so customers can get a sense of how the paint will look on their walls.

Yolo Colorhouse is manufactured by Kelly-Moore Paints in Hurst, Texas, and also is distributed by Kelly-Moore.