Wake Up, Blog!

It's been quite a while since my last post! Oh well, I never intended this blog to be a diary of my life, anyway - I just wanted to share my art, even if it's with only a few people.

Here's the art part: Since it's windy here today, I thought I'd post a picture of my "Bad Hair Day" tip-in page. Everyone has a bad hair day when it's windy, right? I know I do, because the wind blows my hair up, and it doesn't go back down, ha, ha!

How I made the page: Background stencilled with bottled inks, added a few postage stamps, magazine cut-out face and hand, "sweater" from purchased textured paper, all types of wild, wooly and stringy yarns for hair, crow cut from craft foam sheet. Appropriate "found" words cut from books were added, such as: "See it?", "natural", "unusual effects", and "eye-catching".

Inchie Wall Hanging

I've been collecting so many inchies from swaps and trades, and I've been wanting to display them in some way. I finally decided on a large fabric wall hanging. It's made of some sort of loopy upholstery fabric, so that inchies with velcro on their backs will stick to it. This also allows me to add/remove/rearrange the inchies whenever I'd like.

Inchies Again!

I'm still in love with inchies! Maybe that's because there are so many techniques that can be used on them. Here's an example, these paint technique inchies that were recently swapped. In the top row, I've used paint like a fabric to cover 1" chipboard squares. The second row has metallic-painted backgrounds. In the third row, the two on the left have torn masking tape under the paint, and the right two have hearts made of texture medium. These all use various metallic paints, and they shine much better in real life! :)

Watercolor Inchies

Another inchies post today! These intuitive watercolor inchies were made for a swap which is now completed. We were supposed to see images in the random watercolor blotches, and draw them. My blotches just looked like bits and pieces, so I turned them into crazy quilt pieces!

Valentine Inchies

These inchies are perfect to post on Valentine's Day because of their theme. They were created for swap and were distributed to the participants, so now I can show them here.

Most of them have some punched areas made with corner punches, or punch-out hearts. The two red ones in the lower right corner were my favorites, so I kept them for myself! ;)

Colorful Inchies

I love making (and receiving) inchies! I like "small stuff", and that includes creating small art projects. Until I found out about inchies, though, I never knew that art could be so tiny (and yet so fun to make)!

I have been participating in some inchies swaps lately. The photo is a set I made for an "intuitive watercolor" inchie swap. Colors were dripped randomly on watercolor paper. When dry, the "crazy quilt" designs were drawn on with a fine-point black pen. The watercolor paper was then cut into squares (slightly smaller than 1") and mounted on 1" black card stock squares. Last, the words and buttons were glued on.

Blog Revival

I knew that it was a long time since my last post, but I didn't think it was THAT long! Well, it's time to revive this old blog - it's not dead, it was just sleeping!

Here is an ATC I made for a nice swap hostess; shhh, don't tell her! The background is acrylic-painted paper towels, torn and glued onto cardstock. The black and white images has some words, purple iridescent flower sequins and gold brads added.

Halloween Inchies

Since today is October 31, I thought I'd post this picture of Halloween inchies. I made these for a Halloween inchies swap, so they have gone to their new owners, but I still have the picture! The backgrounds are acrylic-painted cardstock (either orange or turquoise), Halloween images and words, plus stars punched from either the orange or turquoise painted cardstock. Happy Halloween! :)

More Inchies?!

Here are the last of my color swap inchies, violet. On purple cardstock, I layered various purple/violet paper scraps, images, words, and my choice of embellishments. These embellishments range from marker and glitter glue to jewels, buttons, or plastic doodads. In the swaps, we are asked to make each one different, in case someone has to get two from the same person. I don't mind doing that at all. Sure, it would be easier to embellish them all the same, but it's fun and interesting to decorate them in different ways! :)

Inchie Habit

These are the indigo inchies for a swap. Indigo was by far the hardest color I had to make: I knew they had to be dark, but how dark, and should they be violet-blue or not? Finally, I had to stop asking myself these questions and just do it! The cardstock has various printed papers added to it, and most of the images are from postage stamps. The embellishments include mini buttons or mini confetti stars (iridescent or silver) or glitter glue (which doesn't show up much). Thanks for looking, hugs! :)

Inchie Parade

Here is my inchie parade for today. These are a set of blue inchies for a swap. The bases are blue cardstock with assorted blue papers. Some of them have glitter glue (which doesn't show up), and the edges are colored. And I just noticed I forgot the words on the center one (with the shield)! All the images on this set are from postage stamps. Postage stamps have perfect-size images for inchies. I rarely use the stamps as-is, I usually cut out images from them or cut parts off.

Inchie Explosion!

I just finished scanning 4 sets of inchies that I've completed in the last few days. (While I had the time, I've been trying to get ahead on some swaps.) I've only been making inchies since the spring, and already I've made 401 of them. This includes inchies that I created, even the ones that have been traded. They added up pretty fast, since I started out making 27 inchies in my first sets. (The reason I started by making that many is I have some heavy cardstock in 3" x 9" strips, which makes 27 inchies on each strip!) Pictured here are the yellow inchies I made for a swap. They are made with two layers of cardstock; the top layer was rubbed with a yellow dye ink pad. The backgrounds have additional torn paper strips, marker or glitter glue. All have yellow images and descriptive words, some even have mini buttons or jewels!

Inchies for a swap

I made this set of inchies for a private swap with a friend, I put them in the mail today. The background is printed lightweight cardstock, two layers ( one layer as backing). The images were cut out from a large sticker sheet. For embellishment, I added words (they are song titles) and white pearl dimensional paint. I'm really hooked on inchies - they are SO small, but lots of fun to make! :)

Fun Mail!

Today I received a wonderful ATC in a swap with Alice K. Her ATC has some beautiful purply-blue tones and metallics, with plums and a leaf attached with a brad. Very elegant! And not only did Alice send the ATC, she also included some awesome extra goodies, seen in the second photo. I always say, one can never have too much ephemera! (Of course, I also saved the great Finland postage stamps from Alice's envelope!) Thanks, Alice!