Guest Author - Vivienne Oestergaard
Do you love ATCs? Do you love mixed media work in a smaller scale? You may want to try these new forms: Inchies, Twinchies, Rinchies, Rollos, and Moos!!! The names are charming and the art is satisfying. Because of the size of the art, you can make so much more and incorporate them into other larger pieces. Similar to ATCs in that you can create whatever type of art desired, but the space is regulated.
Inchies are tiny pieces of art sized 1 inch by 1 inch (app. 2.5 cm by 2.5 cm)
Twinchies are twice as big at 2 inches by 2 inches (app. 5 cm by 5 cm)
Rinchies fit inside a flattened bottle cap
Rollos use a rolodex card as the base
Moos are sized 1 1/8 inch by 2 ¾ inch, designed originally to be a business card with your art on one side and your information on the other, moos are certainly going the way of ATCs with artists swapping them.
So how do I get started? For the base, you might go for the heavy weight watercolor paper or some light cardboard such as an old cereal box or chipboard, for rinchies, you might try a lighter watercolor paper since you will be adhering these to a bottle cap. Easiest to cut these sizes would be to use a paper punch. You can purchase square and circular punches in these sizes. Otherwise, try a ruler and/or a compass and make a bunch of them since you will get addicted.
Then, create a background by painting the tiny shapes. Or, you might try hybrid crafting by taking digital paper into your graphics program, cutting out squares/circles, then printing them out on your printer. Or, you might want to just take some of your excess scrap pieces of paper and punch out the shapes and adhering it to your base. The sky is the limit! Try glitter, try using cotton balls on your stamp pads and applying it to your shapes, try applying your stamp pad directly onto the base.
What’s next? You might want to make some elements by rubber stamping an image on another sheet of paper (copy paper or any other type), coloring it in, cutting it out and adhering it to your base. You can use buttons, charms, wire, silk or paper flowers, paper piecing scraps, glitter, any thing you can think of. This is another type of art that involves recycling. As far as adhesives, paper glue should do the trick for most elements. If you are adhering buttons or thicker items, try a stronger glue such as an all purpose glue or crafting glue.
Now what do you do with these tiny creations? Again, the sky’s the limit. Place them on cards for a mixed media look, decorate a small chest of drawers, create a shadow box with rinchies, use it in your scrapbooking, decopage the inchies and twinchies, stick it in your altered art journal, put them on tags for gift giving, use them on your jam jars, think a little out of the box and you’ll find a use for them!
