Inchies

Last year I made my first inchie, but after it was finished I wondered what to do with it. I was busy with other art projects and most of my time was being devoured trying to design scrapbook layouts (I am not a scrapbook person, but took on the job when a friend could not continue due to illness) for the GRADS teen parent program I teach art to.

Recently I was attending the Wednesday mini lunch demo and they were showing a variety of art techniques and materials to make inchies. But what really caught my attention was how to display them. Someone brought in their collection mounted on matt board and ready to be framed. What I really loved was the instructor framed four of her inchies in a small dollar store frame with four photo windows.

My mind was whirling and as soon as the class was over I was off to the dollar store. I bought 20 black frames that each had four openings resembling a mini version of the larger photo display screens/room dividers.

I pulled out a variety of supplies, paper, beads, embossing powders, stencil paste, pens, and more and set to work to make three more inchies. I didn’t realize until I was finished that all four inchies had a bird theme because I had been to busy playing. I removed the glass from the frames and cut black suede paper for the matt and then mounted the inchies.

Yahoo! The first of my ten art class samples for the next school year was complete. I know they girls are going to have so much fun making their own mini art pieces, framing them, and displaying them at home.

In my journey to learn a little bit more about inchies I found some wonderful websites with information, insight, and trades. I also learned that inchies are one inch by one inch but there are variations on the same theme. There are fat inchies or plus size inchies 1 ½ “x 1 ½”, twinchies 2” x 2”, thrinchies 3” x 3”, and extreme inchies 1” x 2 ½”.

Inch: At first an inch was the width of a man's thumb. In the 14th century, King Edward II of England ruled that 1 inch equaled 3 grains of barley placed end to end lengthwise.