Making and swapping ‘inchies’ is the latest craze to sweep the crafting community, but what are they, where did the idea come from and why is it so popular?  Carolyn Staton tells us more.

Creating art in miniature is not new, you only have to look at the miniature murals of Ancient Greece, the first letter of a manuscript finely embellished by Middle Ages monks, or the miniature portraits on ivory or vellum found in Elizabethan England to see man’s fascination with creating art on a small scale, a fascination which has continued to the present day. Inchies are, as the name suggests, miniature works of art on a 1”x1” canvas. The originator of this latest phenomenon to sweep the crafting world is Julie O’Neill who hosted a swap through the Altered Art Obsession group in August 2006 to create 100 original, one of a kind 1”x1” collaged squares. The rules she set was that they must be mixed media, contain one picture and at least one word. The participants were to send their squares in and receive 100 back to frame or use in any way they wished. As the ladies made their collaged squares many of them were posted on blogs where they were seen by others, and the craze was started. Although the idea of collaged squares is not new as ‘collaged serendipity squares’ which have been used to decorate scrapbook pages for a number of years, Julie’s swap was the first time they were made as small as 1”x1” directly for swapping. Since the original swap in 2006, many artists who enjoy making ATCs are turning their hands to inchies and discovering despite the challenges of working on such a small scale that they love them, partly because they are quick and use up those bits and pieces that are too small for anything else. As a result the number of inchie swaps now being hosted is growing almost exponentially.

So how do you make them?

Put quite simply, as long as it is on a 1”x1” background almost anything goes, from the simplest sticker or stamp on a background loved by the children, to the more complex including drawing, painting, collages, decoupage, teabag folding, triple embossing, encaustic art etc… people even make fabric inchies! How you make the inchies depends on the technique to be used. Cutting the squares in advance and then decorating them works best for techniques including stickers, encaustic art, triple embossing or decoupage.

In contrast, for collage inchies I will cover an A5 piece of heavyweight cardstock with a mixture of scraps of co-ordinating or contrasting paper, scraps of text or music and paint and then add some stamping to generate a background that is full of colour, texture and interest.

Then I will cut this entire background into 1”x1” squares before embellishing with little images, text, hand drawn elements, shading, stickers, flowers, gems, brads etc and finally edge them with ink or embossing.

So what can you do with them?

Well, the answer is you are only limited by your imagination! I personally swap inchies with my crafting friends and have a decorated file with coin pocket pages to store them in.

I have also mounted a set of 20 oriental inchies into a frame, used them as embellishments on scrapbook pages and cards and cut a single image into inchies before mounting on a card. Other people have used them as embellishments on books or boxes sealed with varnish, mounted hundreds on canvass for an interesting piece of artwork, made accordion books, turned them into mobiles, Christmas decorations, fridge magnets and used the memory frames from Ranger to turn them into pendants or charm bracelets. The possibilities are endless, so why not have a go and see whether you, like me, will become obsessed with crafting in miniature!

Tags | altered art, ATC's, Carolyn Staton, Collage, Decoupage, drawing, Embossing, encaustic art, Inchies, Painting, stamping, swapping, teabag folding