Best practices for items with multiple attributes?

[Servelan]

I know how to add attributes and have already worked out how to do one of my products that comes in three sizes, each size with multiple colors available (standard colors like red, green, cobalt, etc). So far, so good. However, I have three different products that come in over 20 colors each (craft-related stuff) and I can't easily standardize the color names because I have things like light lemon yellow and lemon yellow, or colors named 'goldenrod' and 'sea mist' and in order to keep track of them by the mfgr's or source's name for reordering I don't want to come up with some totally new color naming scheme that would bloat the generic attribute 'color'.

If I make an attribute 'foo' for product 'bar' and assign the different colors to 'foo' for attachment to 'bar', is that a reasonable solution? By that I mean 'bar' would have the attribute 'foo' with values of sea mist, goldenrod, apple green, etc. so that generic colors for all my other products could be kept separate?

Or are there better ways to implement oddball color schemes like this?

I wouldn't ask, but as I said, it's over 60 colors altogether and the scheme I already used for different sized items with several colors each doesn't seem to scale easily in this instance.

I also have a lot of craft-related magazines to sell, and plan on doing those by the year with options for available months. Is that the best way to organize them, or is there a better method?

[Ajeh]

Would have Option Names of:
Color
Color:

make it easier to sort out the two groups of Colors?

[Servelan]

Unfortunately it's not just two sets of colors; there are 'regular' colors I can choose from for most products, which includes red, orange, yellow, etc., and then there are three other sets, one for each of the three products in question, each consisting of at least 20 colors.

After some thought, I think I need to have a color attribute specific to each item. That way if I ever run out of that product, I can delete its attribute(s) without danger of deleting those of any other product.