Well, they did it. Stampin' Up! caught me a little off guard this spring by updating their color line while my focus was on other significant things going on in my life. So I'm a little bit late to the table with this "news", but here's a quick run-down of what's up.

Every so often Stampin' Up! refreshes our color line. This is a really good thing as it keeps us on-trend and doesn't allow our color offerings to stagnate. But while my time and attention have been largely focused on other elements of life recently, I guess I hadn't really paid attention to how long it had been since we'd had a significant color update. And apparently, it was time, lol.

So on June 1st, with the debut of the upcoming 2018 – 2019 Annual Catalog, we'll have a shiny, new collection of colors to work with!

Here are some of the highlights of this update:

• The In Color program will remain the same as it's been; every year 5 new colors will be introduced in the Annual Catalog, remain available for 2 years, and then retire. Given that each In Color collection has a life-span of 2 years, there will always be 10 In Colors in effect at any given time: the 5 just beginning their 2-year term, and the 5 on the 2nd year of their 2-year term. This year's new In Colors are bright and remind me of primary colors, which will be awesome for kid-themed projects and/or graduation stamping because many schools use one or more of these as their school colors!
• 13 Core colors are retiring at the end of May (unless they sell out first, of course). (That's about 1/3 of our previous core collection.)
• 27 Core colors (about 2/3 of our previous collection) will remain active, but individual colors may shift from one color family to another.
• 10 Brand-new colors will join our core collections.
• 6 Popular In Colors from previous years will return and take their places as new core colors. (Note that Flirty Flamingo is one of those colors, even though previously scheduled to retire this year as a current In Color.)
• 3 "Basic" colors (Whisper White, Very Vanilla and Basic Black) have staged an uprising and formed their own mini color collection (called "Basics"), which leaves space for 3 MORE colors in our regular line than we've had previously! 

You may have heard that at the same time as these colors become effective, the ink pad cases themselves will be redesigned as well. That's true, and I'll share more information about that later. But for now, here's Stampin' Up!'s color line-up as it will stand on June 1st. If you'd like to download and study a PDF with this information you may get it here. (For best color reproduction when printing you may wish to print onto photo paper using your printer's "best" setting.)