Artful Times - Inchies

Oh My - there were some inspiring piece amongst the "Layered Acetate" challenge!  Thank you one and all.

Well today it is my turn again and you all know how I love doing "inchies" so that is my choice for this Challenge here on Artful Times.  I decided to use something different from my usual selection of inchie stamps and used this Tin Can Mail one depicting 'four pretty maids all in a row'.

As you can see, this could be a Less Is More Card as there is so little on it.  That's the way I wanted it though.

If any of you have this stamp you will notice that I have swapped the two ends about.  When I looked at the images I thought they represented the four seasons, the first being spring and the last (as in my picture) being winter.  So that is why they are arranged this way.  Don't you think they are the seasons now?

First of all I stamped the image on mountboard (you will probably remember I ALWAYS use mountboard for my inchies, just think it give a bit more substance to such a small piece.  You will also notice that they all finish at the neck whereas on the actual stamp you do see a bit of the gowns they are wearing - well, the neckline!  I had to do this to make the two ends measure 1" x 1".

First of all I tried colouring with watercolours but found that this particular mountboard (I was using the back - doh) rubbed up with the addition of water so I used my pencil crayons to get the colour.  Next they were double mounted and then placed on a plain white card.  Whether I will add a word at the bottom or not later remains to be seen.

Now, we have had some super entries in our challenges to date so I hope we get some in this challenge also.  Thanks so much for joining us with our challenges particularly our regulars, it is nice to see how you interpret our themes.

Over to Artful Times to see what Von, Sam and you come up with.

Me and My Inchies

What a lovely challenge there is on the Less is More blog this time - you have to use three of something.  Well, as soon as I saw it I thought "three inchies!" and promptly got my stamps out.  I have quite a few that would do for inchies but chose the three little girls from Crafty Individuals this time.

I first of all cut myself some mountboard (remember I like to do my inchies on a good substantial card), dusted it with my anti-stat pad and stamped and embossed with Archival Black Ink.

I then played around with the placement of the inchies and finally decided to do them with the corners touching.  I was tempted to stamp a simple greeting but decided against it.  You know I do enjoy doing LIM cards and I should join in more often than I do.  My kind of thing!

I was sorely tempted to do another one but didn't have the time so will have to leave it at this one.  There are some beautiful samples from the DT and some lovely cards that have already been uploaded.  Why not pop over and have a peep.

BIRDS - of the Feathered Variety of Course

Well, here we are again with yet another Challenge from Artful Times.  It only seems like a week ago that I was posting the last one.  Thanks to all you lovely folks out there who joined in with our challenge - we do appreciate each and every one of our followers and we love to visit your blogs to look at your entries from your thumbnails.

Just a reminder that you need to check our Guidelines to make sure you are eligible for the next time we give a prize out.

This month it was Von who chose the theme for our Challenge and as you can see from the heading, from Von's and Sam's postings and from the Challenge site it is "Birds".

I have some quite nice "inchie" stamps of birds so I decided to use them as I do enjoy making inchies but rarely get asked to do them in a swap of any kind.  When I am making mine I always use mountboard as I think it is much more substantial than ordinary cardstock for such a picture.  Here are my Bird inchies - on a tag for this week's Challenge:

You will never guess what I used for the background on the actual inchies - DI's - yes, my usual Distress Inks - I must start to use something else.  I am getting boring!  The images were stamped with Archival Black Ink and the tag was sprayed with Crafty Notions Turquoise and then oversprayed with Champagne.  I really do like these sprays as they seem to work better than any others on the market.  Such a shame that you cannot see the glimmer from the photograph.

As well as doing these inchies I did some, identical, but in Polymer Clay.  Yes, if you use a light colour (I used white) you can colour in just as on cardstock with your Distress Inks and then stamp your image with the Archival Ink - bake them in the oven and they come out just fine.  I'm not showing them to you as I haven't done anything with them yet, I need to do some more and then I will decorate a photo frame with them like I did before here.  (Although the inchies were a lot more complicated that I used previously as they were a collection from my Polymer Friends)

Right, as usual I have chatted far too long, hope you enjoy all the 'birdie' things the Artful Times team have done and we all look forward to seeing what you make for us to look at and comment on.  Remember, we like comments too.

Inch War

Not really, but I have been producing a good few inchies.  Hip was bothering me so I got up and did a bit of stamping to while away the time and take my mind off things.  Decided to join in an inchie swap on one of my groups and needed to produce twelve of the little blighters.

I always use mountboard for my inchies.  I just think it gives them a bit more substance - but if you do it always always remember to colour the sides as it looks unfinished if you leave a white edge to them.  You can't see it on these scans but some of them have Gold Dabber on the edges.  This comes out quite bubbly from my applicator (none of the others do) so when you heat it it sets lumpy and looks quite nice in this instance.

Off to a bad start with these (blame the ink):

Oops! Hadn't realised that last one was balancing on one knee but am leaving it there as there is another one coming up in a mo. Wasn't happy with these and so I did a couple more and eventually had twelve to send off:

Top one is just stamped in black and embossed, second one is coloured with Spun Sugar then butterfly is coloured with Twinkling H2o's, third one is Wild Honey and Tumbled Glass as is the fourth one.  All stamped in  black and embossed in clear.  I had used my Momento Black on the first lot but these were done in Archival Black which came out much better.

First one is coloured with Twinkling H2o's, second is Wild Honey and Tumbled Glass again third one Spun Sugar with Victorian Velvet on the edges and the last one is just Twinkling H2o's.

Last ones - all except third one coloured with Twinkling H2o's - that again, is Wild Honey and Tumbled Glass.

You will recognise two of them as coming from these images which I went on to use for cards:

Bonjour!

Size Matters

This is the first time I have ever had to come up with a theme for a month for the Just for Fun Challenge.  I think I was probably influenced by the fact that I had come back from the Tim Holtz workshop with the ArtsyCrafty team (Leandra and Lin) and we had all made "inchies" to give to Tim in a book as a little gift which we could all contribute to.

Well, that's my excuse anyway!

Sorry I am having you working in miniature but it is not as formidable as it first seems.  I made my inchies out of mountboard, coloured them with Distress Inks and then stamped partial images on them.  You don't have to stamp whole images on so don't be rushing out to buy small stamps.

Here are mine:

Stamps - Invoke

I stamped them just like I stamp my dominoes, taking the mountboard to the stamp rather than the stamp to the mountboard - that way you have more control over what part of the whole image you are going to use.  You can't see it in the scan but I selected parts from each image and highlighted the part with Glossy Accents.  It is mainly the words that I used for highlighting but the other two images also have it on them.

A couple of links to help you get started are: MCJULIO'sBlog and  spottedcanary plus the ones on the JFF blog:

art by christi    Or this one to give you some ideas on how you can use them in cards
all in an inch (scroll down to April 23rd)

I know if you Google "inchies art form" you will find lots more (including embroidered ones)  but in the meantime here is a bracelet I did using Stampbord.  If you have some hanging around why not try one of these inch sized pieces.

They are such good fun and the Stampbord punches like a dream with your Crop-a-dile.  I did have another bracelet which I would have liked to have shown you, done many moons ago, but can I find it, can I heck!  Here is the pendant that went with it anyway - the bracelet had smaller side view heads on in the polymer clay.  Otherwise it was the same Stampbord base.

Not an inchie but an accompaniment to one

(just to give you ideas)

Hope I am not driving you all mad with my miniature works of art and certainly hope we get some entries - now I will be having sleepless nights!  Promise next week's challenge will not be so small.