I first wrote about these tiny collage squares two years ago, when they were first becoming popular. Now, they’re everywhere, and it seems like every swap group is exchanging them like mad.

Inchies have evolved a bit in the last two years, and spawned a few new terms—so, here’s my visual guide to the world of ridiculously small collage swapping terms:

Inchie: a one inch square piece of artwork. Generally, inchies have been collaged, but I’ve seen all manner of artwork done on them. I can only do digital artwork in this size, because my eyes are just too tired to work this small in paper collage.

Rinchie: a one inch round piece of artwork. Rinchies have the advantage of fitting into flattened bottle caps when complete, which means they can instantly become pendants, charms or pins.

Twinchie: a two inch square piece of artwork. Twinchies are much easier to work with if you’re used to doing ATCs, and want to start scaling downward. Stop off and do a few twinchies on your way down to inchies.

Moo: a 1-1/8 x 2-3/4 inch piece of artwork. Originally called Moo Cards or Mini Moo Cards, they were first printed at Moo.com from people’s Flickr photos. The size became so popular that folks started making artwork to be printed on the cards, and then just started making the artwork that size. Moo cards came from a different direction than inchies, but they’re now traded in pretty much the same way.

First, slide the calendar out of the vinyl sleeve.

Now, if your cover is really ugly, like my lighthouse calendar, you might have to cover it completely. I used a big scrap of scrapbook paper from another project, and just opened the calendar flat, and glued it down with some glue stick.

Trim to size, and the ugly cover is gone!

My other calendar was a floral, which was nicer, but still had ugly text to cover. Since I was planning to glue some large images on the covers anyway, I left the floral alone, and artfully glued my image over the ugly text. (These images are from the Rossetti Tin sheet from Ten Two Studios.)

Next, a little text. I liked the word Remember—something arty, but still in keeping with the fact that it’s a calendar, and will probably be used for tracking appointments. I just added a few scraps of paper, and rubber stamped the text in place. If you’re not stampish, you might want to just print some text out on your computer.

Once the glue and ink were dry, I could slide the vinyl covers back over the finished calendars. How clever of the manufacturer to provide protection for my collage!

Here are the finished results:

Much better! These took me all of five minutes to dress up. Wouldn’t they make great stocking stuffers?

Since our meeting is being held just a few doors down from a very large Barnes and Noble bookstore, I thought handmade bookmarks would be appropriate. My plan is to tuck these into some of the books in the craft section.

I made ten of these bookmarks in about half an hour, using a variation of the Serendipity Squares technique.

I started by sorting through my mountain of scraps. I usually sort by color, and this time, I discovered I had a lot of pink and magenta pieces. I don’t usually use pink much, so I don’t feel badly about using these scraps up as quickly as possible!

I tore the scraps into chunks, and glued them to a piece of plain white cardstock. These scraps were sort of large. If you prefer to work with smaller pieces, your end result will be even more interesting.

Next, I stamped and embossed over the whole sheet with butterflies and the words FREE ART!

I cut the sheet into ten pieces by splitting it down the middle, then cutting two inch strips. There was just a tiny bit of waste left over.

Next, I stamped a bit more on each piece. I wanted to be sure the FREE ART! message appeared on each bookmark, so I started with that. I also stamped some postage cancellations and swirls.

Each bookmark got a hole punched in the top center to accomodate some fibers.

The fibers were simply looped through the punched hole, and trimmed to an even length.

There ya go—instant bookmarks, ready to be set free at Barnes and Noble!

Here’s how I made my penants:

I wanted to hang the penants from something sturdy, but I really didn’t want to invest in dowels—my goal was to use up what I had, not buy more. I dug around and found some packs of bamboo skewers leftover from some piano hinge books. Perfect! I started by cutting off the pointy tips with some wire cutters.

I poked the ends of the skewers into a little E6000, and slid a small wooden bead over the glue. This gave the ends a nice finish, and will keep my ribbon hangers from sliding off later.

While the glue was drying, I started working on the penants. First, I needed a simple base to work on. I measured the halfway point on the short edge of a piece of white bristol, and marked it.

I popped a few sheets of bristol into the cutter, with the marked piece on top, and made an angled cut from the end of one short edge to the mid-point of the other. I flipped the pieces over, and made the corresponding cut on the other side. Perfect triangles.

Next, I sorted through my pile of scraps, putting pieces I wanted to use together in piles.

I started at the top of each penant, gluing down one large scrap, and letting it hang over the edge of the triangle a bit. I measured a strip about an inch and a half wide, and folded this over to the back side of the penant. I trimmed the scraps down to the penant shape.

The skewer hangers I made earlier were glued into the fold. This made a nice, stable top edge, and a neat finish on the back side of the penant.

Now, some decorating on the front side. I just cut strips of papers, and glued them in place, trimming the sides even with the penant shape.

I had some images leftover from a project at Ten Two Studios, so I cut around them and glued them onto the penants. I covered the bottom edges with a scrap of ribbon.

The penants seemed to need a bit of dimensional embellishment after all this flat work, so I dug around for ribbon roses, buttons and leaves, and glued them in place with a little Tacky glue.

I cut circles from solid scraps using a punch, and applied stamped letters to them. These were glued onto the penant with a glue stick.

When the penant was finished, I tied a little sheer ribbon to the hanger, letting the tails hang down like streamers. The penants are pretty light, so no gluing or knotting was required.

A finished penant, decorated with an expression I use quite often

]]> http://gomakesomething.com/ht/collage/scrap-penants/feed/ 0 http://gomakesomething.com/ht/collage/inchies/ http://gomakesomething.com/ht/collage/inchies/#comments Sun, 24 Sep 2006 15:49:35 +0000 Lisa Vollrath http://gomakesomething.com/?p=139 My birthday is next week, and I’ve learned to ask for cards and mail art if I want any sort of celebration. I posted a note in my blog asking for a little postal love, and one of the packages that arrived early contained a handful of tiny square collages, and a note telling me to give them a try. I’m never one to pass up a challenge, so I decided to dive right in.

The pieces I received were all 1″ squares, which I initially thought was just too insanely small to even consider. Even though I used to do dollhouse miniatures, and have plenty of experience creating art so small it’s almost impossible to see, I just didn’t think I could go that small. I started with 1-1/2″ squares. That extra half inch in each direction makes a huge difference! I worked my way down to one inch squares, which were small, but actually a lot of fun. Here’s how I did the handful you see here:

First, I sifted through my ridiculously large scrap pile, looking for interesting small pieces of background papers. I also pulled out some light colored solid cardstock scraps to use as bases.

I glued the pieces of background paper to the solid cardstock using a glue stick. I contemplated doing a little stamping on the uncut backgrounds, but never got around to it. Next time, maybe.

Next, I used a paper trimmer to cut strips. I cut more in 1-1/2″ strips than 1″, and tossed them into piles sorted by size.

Next, I cut the bases into squares. The paper trimmer helped me keep them square and straight, things I find impossible to achieve with scissors or a craft knife.

OK, now it’s time to decorate. I was in a face sort of mood, so I clipped faces from the scrap pile. Some were from faux postage sheets, some from image collection prints, and some were from magazines and catalogs. I cut myself a pile of faces and face parts, then glued, doing a sort of assembly line. It’s really easy to get a whole bunch of these going at once.

I’m in a phase where everything I do has to have a word on it. For pieces this small, I needed really tiny words. The text from articles in Time magazine seemed exactly the right size. These were cut one at a time, and glued down quickly, because the ceiling fan above my work table tends to blow little loose pieces away as soon as I put them down.

I tried different types of edge treatments. I patted some edges with embossing ink, and then dipped them in embossing powder. That was a little too thick and crunchy for such tiny artwork. I edged some with chalk inks, and others with just a hand drawn line. I originally tried this with just plain old waterbased pens, but some of my magazine images repelled the ink, so I switched to Sharpies, which gave a nice, bold edge. I patted a few squares with a bit of glitter glue, and glued small star-shaped confetti on others. It was quite a challenge to find things small enough to decorate the pieces.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed making these squares very much. In some ways, they were very much like gluebooks, requiring little in materials or thought. I just cut and glued, and in about half an hour, I had two dozen squares of each size.

Now what? I think these might be very swappable. They’re small enough to make quickly and mail for minimal cost. They’d look great glued down as a grid on a canvas or a piece of cardstock. Maybe a quick swipe of sealer and a pin back, and they can be tiny art pins. What would you do with them?

]]> http://gomakesomething.com/ht/collage/inchies/feed/ 0 http://gomakesomething.com/ht/gluebooks/throw-away/ http://gomakesomething.com/ht/gluebooks/throw-away/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2004 01:08:27 +0000 Lisa Vollrath http://gomakesomething.com/?p=203 Like many artists, I fall into habits when I’m working. I’ll find myself grabbing the same colors of paint or paper, or the same rubber stamp, even though the selection laying around in my studio is pretty diverse. What’s a girl to do when she finds herself headed for a creative rut? One of my solutions is to do some throw-away collage.

Fellow artist and all around fun girl Jane Dickinson of Art By The Yard introduced me to this concept a while back, and it’s been great for forcing me to look at things with fresh eyes. There’s no big investment involved here: just a pile of junk mail, which is plentiful at my house, and a glue stick. Pens and paints are optional, and I tend to do most of my throw-aways without them.

The goal is to create a collage from the pile of trash in front of you. Don’t think too much, don’t plan—just dive in and start gluing. One of the tricks I’ve learned is to hold each piece of junk upside-down, to see its colors and shapes rather than its message. I also give myself additional challenges, such as having to use a stamp I haven’t tried yet, or a paper punch that’s been hanging around unused, which is how the stars in this collage were born.

I keep a small, portable throw-away collage journal, which travels with me anytime I go on a trip. Hotel rooms are a wonderful place to do throw-away collage. I’ve also done throw-away postcards, and sent them to other like-minded artists. No matter where I work, or in what size, I always come away from the collage with a fresh perspective, looking at my materials in a whole new way.

Go grab today’s mail and make some throw-aways of your own!

]]> http://gomakesomething.com/ht/gluebooks/throw-away/feed/ 0 http://gomakesomething.com/ht/collage/serendipity-squares/ http://gomakesomething.com/ht/collage/serendipity-squares/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2004 01:07:06 +0000 Lisa Vollrath http://gomakesomething.com/?p=202 With the cost of good paper constantly on the rise, I feel compelled to save every little scrap leftover from my projects. After a flurry of activity, that pile of leftovers grows into a mountain. What the heck do you do with a mountain of paper scraps? Make serendipity squares!

This is what the back right corner of my work table looked like this morning. Yikes! Somewhere under all this paper fallout is a set of stacking file trays, but you’d never know it now. I’ve got to clean this pile up. Since I’d rather do just about anything rather than clean, I’ll clean a little, then play a little, alternating until both the pile and the squares are done.

First, I pull out all the big pieces of cardstock. Wow, look at all this stuff! These will make great backgrounds for my squares. I pile these together, and set them aside.

Next, I start piling the little pieces by color or theme. Today’s sorting is definitely by color: naturals toward the back, blue and green down front, and a piles of reds and black and white over to the right.

Once I’ve sorted, I grab a glue stick, one pile of scraps, and a piece from that solid cardstock pile, and go to work. I tear random pieces of scraps, and glue them down, covering the background paper completely. The glue has to dry before I can move on to the next step, so it’s either time for a little more cleaning, or I can move on to another pile of scraps and do the same collage process to set up another set of squares.

Along with the big pile of scraps, I’ve usually got some dirty stamps waiting to be cleaned. I’ve seen people do this part of the process different ways, but for me, it works best to do a layer of stamping with dye ink and a background stamp of some type, to help tie all the different pieces of paper together. Here, I’ve chosen a postcard stamp, and some blue Fresco ink, and stamped all over my scrap collage.

Next, some shine. I grabbed an Asian text stamp and some silver Brilliance ink, and stamped here and there, then threw some pewter embossing powder on it. Unlike the previous layer of stamping, which completely covered all the papers, this one just sort of fills in some visual empty spots.

My collage used lots of solid papers, so here’s one more layer of stamping and embossing, this time with a big rose leaf stamp.

The last step is cutting. I cut both one inch and inch and a half squares from this piece. The smaller squares are great to decorate standard quarter sized cards. Big squares are good to throw in an altered book layout, or onto a deco page.

Since I had a blue deco laying on my work table, I went ahead and used this set of squares on a page. These are the larger sized squares, as they were cut. Sometimes, I’ll mount each square on a slightly larger square of solid cardstock, or edge the squares with embossing ink applied direct to paper, and a little embossing powder.

This is what my scrap pile looks like now. Much better! I knew those file trays were under there somewhere. Now I’m ready to start my next round of projects, and another mountain of scraps.

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