Like most web site owners, I have a stats program attached to my sites that tells me what people are searching for when they visit—and lately, they’ve been searching for the term inchie. I hope this article gives those of you who are searching for this term what you’re looking for…
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.
