Inchies & Twinchies & Rinchies* Oh My!

We're still celebrating a merry *LITTLE* Christmas, making cards that feature Inchies or Twinchies. If this prompt has you scratching your head, here's a great article on the PaperArtsy website, with lots of great twists on incorporating you tiny art into cards! 

Here's what we made this week:

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "This week I've gone DOUBLE or nothing, lol, by taking on the two-inch square, aka "Twinchie". Again I've made my squares coordinate, though of course that is not a requirement and a grid of lots of random small squares in different styles would be really cool. But I wanted to used my Pretty Pink Posh "Holiday Pals" stamp set, so I colored them with neutrals and added trees from the same set, as well as patterned paper sky and snow, to tie them all together. I love the way three Twinchies fill a slimline card... this is definitely an idea you'll be seeing again!" 

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, " I used stamped sentiments from three different tiny wood-mounted stamps on a Karin BrushMarker Background.  Then I added an Eyelet Outlet Holiday Coffee Cup (for the Shopping Our Stash Need a Cup of Coffee Challenge) and mounted the squares with foam tape on a 1 1/4" white square and 1 3/8" black square before nesting them inside the Heffy Doodle Slimline Dies."

Scroll down to the original post to link your Merry *LITTLE* Masterpieces in the Readers' Gallery.

*RINCHIES are round inchies... and super fun to make. Just sayin'... :)

Think Big but Go Small

We're celebrating a merry *LITTLE* Christmas this fortnight at Jingle Belles; by making cards that feature Inchies or Twinchies. Traditionally, we think of inchies as artsy one inch squares, but you can use other shapes, like circles, or perhaps even snowflakes or small embellishments. You might contain your entire image within the inch... or perhaps break a single holiday image into a grid of smaller shapes? Feeling stumped? Here are a few ideas from Pinterest to get you started. Just get creative and go LITTLE! 

Here's what we made this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I cut three twinchie squares from some Tim Holtz Packaging and then used a collection of Tim Holtz Ephemera, stickers and one rubber squire to create three little mini-collages for my design.  I backed them on some poinsettia paper, added a wrap of twine, and finished with two scatterings of some teal gems to tie it all together."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I've embraced the original "Inchie" concept by making three, one-inch, decorated squares. In this case, the three are "kissing cousins" which all feature dictionary paper backgrounds, diecut foliage and Eyelet Outlet holiday brads. To make the inchies stand out against my vintage collage background, I framed them up with two layers of patterned paper and popped the whole thing on foam tape."

Link your Merry *LITTLE* Masterpieces here by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, January 27th. Keyword for galleries and Flickr is JB-21-02. 

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Celebrating TINY Tim

We're still creating with LITTLE things this week ... INCHIES or TWINCHIES; they can be square or round or... well, maybe you have a brand new concept on this idea, in which case, bring it on!

Here is our second round of LITTLE creations:

Lauren's Other Card(s)

Lauren says, "I had really, truly, intended to make some tiny one-inch collages, this week; or at least cut a larger vintage image image up into one or two inch squares! But then I found an oversized Simple Stories journaling card with all of these adorable tiny one-inch icons, just begging to be made into super-easy, flat, mailable holiday cards. And I mean, it would've been rude to say no, really, don't you think?! I went with an easy grid design and added fussy-cut sentiment banners from a couple of other journaling cards in the same collection."

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "This week I inked-up the tiny Irreverent Elf Messages from Hero Arts to create my Inchies (they're actually 1 3/4" squares with mat).   Small squares are the perfect way to feature tiny stamps (like planner stamps)."

Scroll down to the original post (just below this one) for more inspiration and to link up your own LITTLE masterpieces! ♥

Have Yourself a Merry LITTLE Christmas

This week at Jingle Belles we're going LITTLE ... that means creating cards that feature INCHIES (1") or TWINCHIES (2").

Traditionally, we think of inchies or twinchies as squares, but you can use other shapes, like circles; or perhaps even snowflakes or small embellishments.  You might contain your entire image within the *Inch* ... or perhaps break a single holiday image into smaller shapes ... just get creative and go LITTLE. Need more inspiration? There are soooooo many great ideas on Pinterest!

Here are our LITTLE creations for the week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "I found a sheet of these black & white inchie circles hiding in my stash ... I think they were intended to go into bottle caps, but they also work perfectly as the focal image for my card.  I punched the circles and then edged them with a black Sharpie to give a solid border.  The background is text printed on Yupo paper that we used for as a transfer for Gel Press printing in one of my classes at Creativation.  I recycled the texty print by covering it with splashes of alcohol ink."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I went with twinchies and I basically cheated. I mention this, because if you have any of the fab papers out there with two-inch mini journaling cards on them, you can, too! This particular sheet is from American Crafts, but I also have one by Simple Stories and I know there are others! In this case, the colors and motifs went really well with a bunch of different Eyelet Outlet holiday brads, so I've worked in a Poinsettia, a Candy Cane and a sweet Cardinal. I've used this week's awesome Sketch Saturday for my layout."

So break out those tiny stamps, stickers, and embellishments and show us all of the *little* ways you can get creative with your holiday designs.  Link-up your card by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, March 7th.  The keyword for galleries and our Flickr Gallery is JB:18:05.   

An InLinkz Link-up

Celebrating TINY Tim

We're still celebrating TINY things this week ... specifically inchies or twinchies ... on our holiday cards.

Here's our second round of creations:

Stephanie's Other Card

Stephanie says, "I started with a vintage journal page (the horizontal piece with the holes is trimmed from the edge) and combined it with the layout from Crazy for CAS.  I matted my inchies to vary the size and added a few sequins for sparkle."

Lauren's Other Card

Lauren says, "Chalk up a big win for SERENDIPITY this week: i stumbled up the perfect sketch at Christmas Challenges with Sketches AND the perfect palette at Colour-Q, so all i had to do was find a lovely old Christmas card of the correct colors to cut up into a grid, and make a "home" for it using a few choice bits from my stash. Because inchies can be THAT EASY, darlings!!!" :) :) :)

Remember, you have until 6pm EST on Wednesday, January 22nd to link-up your Inchie Card creation.

Have Yourself a Merry *LITTLE* Christmas

For our second prompt of 2014, we're going *little* ... specifically, we're asking you to create cards that feature Inchies (1 inch) or Twinchies (2 inch).

Traditionally, we think of inchies as squares, but you can use other shapes or perhaps even snowflakes or small embellishments.  You might contain your entire image within the *Inch* ... or perhaps break a single holiday image into smaller shapes ... just get creative and go LITTLE.

Here are our creations for this week:

Stephanie's Card

Stephanie says, "My squares are actually 1 1/4" because I wanted a bit more of a frame around my pretty little Hero Arts Snowflake set I found at Michael's.  I decided to go non-traditional with my colors using navy, deep pink and metallic silver from the Sunday Stamps Challenge."

Lauren's Card

Lauren says, "I opted for round twinchies, and layered each of my 2" circles with part of a clear pine bough border sticker, some music note deco tape, red berry rub-ons, and trimmed down dymo label sentiments, finishing off with small florals anchored with Jingle Belle (lol) brads. For the rest of the card I went quite monochromatic... with a pop of red... so the twinchies would be the stars of the show!"

So break out those tiny stamps and show us all of *little* ways you can get creative with your holiday designs.  Link-up your card by 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, January 29th.  The keyword for galleries and our Flickr Gallery is JB:14:02.   

Have Yourself a Merry LITTLE Christmas

So, when Lauren & I were bantering about different holiday card possibilities (yes, bantering with each other is one of our favorite past times), one idea that we thought would be fun was tying some of our card making prompts to holiday song lyrics (because if you're going to make holiday cards all year long, you might as well break out some holiday tunes too).

So this week's Jingle Belle Prompt comes from the song ... Have Yourself a Merry LITTLE Christmas ... which to us inspires making cards that feature Inchies and Twinchies (2" squares) in the design (or perhaps a twinchie-sized gift tag).

I picked up some Inkadinkado Holiday Inchies on sale after the holiday (another perk of making Christmas cards in January), so those are what I featured in my JB02 card design.

Stephanie's Card

Inchies were stamped in Charcoal ink on My Mind's Eye Holly Jolly Snowflake DP, cut out at 1 1/8" to leave a slight border, and then matted on 1 1/4" grey cardstock squares. An 11" x 4 1/4 inch strip of the same DP was scored at 2" on one end and 3 1/2" on the other end to create an off-centered opening. The front was then stamped with Hero Arts Stunning Snowflakes, which were embellished with pearls.

Two inches were adhered on one side of the opening, with the third adhered on the other side.

It's fun to do this fold with two-sided cardstock. The sentiment was stamped on another scrap of snowflake paper and adhered inside.

And now here's Lauren's Card:

lauren's card

i also made inchies, but once i got going i couldn't stop! mine have vintage sheet music backgrounds and are decorated with a combination of hoarded "love, elsie" rub-ons and tiny paperchase stickers. the background of the card is "love, elsie" patterned paper mounted on basic grey "solid" cardstock; embellished with deconstructed silk flowers from michaels, held on by a doodlebug xmas tree brad.

Seriously, doesn't that card just make you want to sing Fa La La La La all day long ... love it!

And now it's time to see what *YOU* will do for CARD TWO:

Have Yourself a Merry *LITTLE* Christmas!

Link your card by 6pm EST on Wednesday, January 12th (use keyword JB02 if you upload to our Flickr Gallery or any other on-line gallery) and then tune in next Friday, January 14th for another prompt!

Remember we're collecting giveaway entries for the entire month of January! Each comment you leave counts as ONE chance in the random draw; each new card you make and link up, counts asTWO additional chances! Complete details HERE!