I’m talking about the Pantone Matching System(or PMS).  An unfortunate acronym if you ask me…but they didn’t, so here we are.

Pantone Inc. is a company based out of New Jersey that began as a commercial printing company in the 1950’s.  Today, they are best known for their color matching system – typically related to printing but also sometimes used to manufacture other items, like paint and plastic.  Without going into the whole history of how color matching works in the design world, the Pantone Matching System is basically a universal way for designers to take their artwork to any printer anywhere in the world, tell them what PMS Callout they want(the color they choose and it’s relative number), and get the same result everywhere because they chose that specific color to be printed.

{Source}

There are literally thousands of PMS Callouts, all different variations and in every color you could possibly imagine – and they are all assigned a number to reference it by.  Working for a large format printer, I see and use the Pantone Matching System on a daily basis and being the design geek that I am, I get a kick out of jokes and random items related to design elements, like these:

Pantone coffee mugs {Source}

iPhone cases…want. {Source}

This is incredible..you can match your coffee or tea to PMS colors…mine would be almost white because of all the cream I put in it – but this would be amazing! {Source}

I am definitely making these sometime, I’m kind of in love.  Now to just find a party of designer geeks that could appreciate them and love them as much as I do…{Source}

So yesterday, after stumbling upon these delicious looking cookies – I decided I wanted to make myself something related to Pantone, because I don’t find a lot of time to do handmade lately – and I almost never make anything for myself.  Inspired by Stephanie May’s felt velcro tea bag heart from yesterday, I decided to use some of my felt that was just lying around to make this:

My very own Pantone necklace!

I decided that I couldn’t just choose one color to do, because I want to be able to wear it with any outfit and whenever I feel like it.  So I made 6 different colors that are interchangeable by velcro.  Fun stuff.

All I did was cut out a 1″ x 2″ white felt rectangle and attach velcro to it.  Then I cut smaller squares of color and put velcro on them as well.  I tried using more white felt for the bottom portion but it was impossible to write my PMS reference numbers on so I just used white cotton and wrote on them with a Sharpie marker.  I added the chain and voila! – a cute necklace with a fun designer reference that I can wear anytime I want.

*Side note – for the last few years, Pantone has come out with “Pantone’s Color of the Year”, which is basically just predicting what the popular color will be and the color that will represent that year.  This year’s color is “Honeysuckle” which is….wait for it…..pink.  Blech.  Just sayin.*

***Don’t forget, THIS Sunday is the last day to enter our super cute vintage giveaway.  Commenting to qualify will end at 9pm MST so head over now and leave a comment here***

Happy weekend!