Viva Magenta! Pantone Color of the Year 2023

I am finally back and must apologize for the long delay.  I have had many things to deal with lately which I will be able to share eventually but not now.  In the meantime, I have just finally begun to mix up some of the new Pantone Spring Fashion colors for this year.

Pantone announced their color of the year for 2023.  It is called Viva Magenta!

I have been seeing a lot of facebook posts regarding this new color.  Some show it as an almost true magenta where some have even shared it as a plum or purple.

So is this color really a shade of magenta?  Or is it more a deeper red?

Leatrice Eiseman, Executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, explains how they "drew inspiration from nature and what is real.  Pantone, Viva Magenta, descends from the Red family and is inspired by the red of cochineal, one of the most precious dyes belonging to the natural dye family as well as one of the strongest and brightest the world has known.

Image credit: Vahe Martirosyan [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

Cochineal is one of the most important insect dyes and you can read more about it here.  And this is another interesting article on its' history:   The Bug That Had the World Seeing Red

The dye it produces is a deep rich shade of red.  By adding various other ingredients, however, it can change to shades of pink, purple and even orange.  I have found that the Pantone color, Viva Magenta is a combination of both red and magenta.  That is why it is so difficult to determine on which side of the scale it really is.

As I mixed up the clay color to match my Pantone Swatch, I suddenly realized that this color looked awfully familiar!  I grabbed my samples and ran to my kitchen to discover why I had recognized it.  It was a dear ringer match for the color on the walls I had painted!  You can see my blog post here on the renovations I did.

I love this warm color and how it makes me feel whenever I am in the kitchen. I was looking for the paint color number but couldn't find the paint chip sample.  I used a Behr paint in a satin finish (recommended for kitchens).  When I find the color chip number I will add it here.

I haven't had time to create anything with my polymer clay version yet but should later on -- after I mix up the spring colors.  So here is the recipe using Kato clay:

Viva Magenta

4 parts Kato Magenta
3 parts Kato Red
1/8 part Kato Black

As you can see it is a very simple recipe that makes such a rich and exotic color!  I will be back shortly with more of my clay recipes for the spring colors.