Pantone Announces Color of 2011

Pantone has announced its 2011 Color of the Year. The color is Pantone 18-2120, known more familiarly as "Honeysuckle".

Described by the company as a "reddish pink" the tone definitely plays into the ongoing vintage theme in the scrapbook industry. Because it also coordinates well with the 2010 color of the year, turquoise (which was seen widely in scrapbook products the past year) we've actually already been seeing some of this tone in product lines that are already on store shelves.

Examples of some recent scrapbook product lines that feature a Honeysuckle pink tone include:

• Little Yellow Bicycle's Clothesline Collection (specifically papers such as Spring Mix and Canary Damask)
• Fancy Pants Designs (Wishful Thinking and Love Birds collections)
• K & Company's holiday themed "Secret Santa" patterned papers
• My Minds Eye "Wonderful Winter" Paper Stack
• The Girls' Paperie "Paper Girl" collection
• Pink Paislee's "Sweetness" collection (especially evident in the journaling pad)

Those are just a few examples of where you may have seen recently a color that has definitely been a building trend in the industry.

According to Pantone, the shift from turquoise reflects a shift in peoples' mindsets, presumably a reflection of the slowly recovering economy. It says that turquoise represented escape to many people (being the color of tropical waters). In contrast, Pantone describes 2011's Honeysuckle pink using words like "verve" and "vigor", and describes how the 2011 color palette helps energize people to deal with the ongoing challenges we face.

Pantone's report from Fashion Week in the Fall of 2010 says that we should also expect to see the following colors dominate the spring of 2011:

• Coral Rose
• Peapod
• Beeswax
• Silver Peony
• Russet
• Regatta
• Blue Curacao
• Lavender
• Silver Cloud

Lavender and gray were already very evident in some holiday scrapbook collections, most notably "Mitten Weather" from Cosmo Cricket. The two neutrals in the collection, gray and brown, have actually been rising trends for awhile in scrapbooking (reference: everything created by Tim Holtz). In fact, the few product lines recently that have used black as a neutral (Cosmo Cricket's Circa 1934, Jenni Bowlin's collections) have really stood out because they've become so unusual.

Overall it looks like the spring color palette predicted by Pantone (and played out at fall fashion week in the spring 2011 fashions) will continue the industry's recent love affair with all things vintage.