You may be asking yourself the same thing I did earlier this year: what are “inchies”?  I first read about inchies in the Impress Rubber Stamps Spring catalog I received in the mail in April 2009. My friend Jen and I enjoy taking card-making classes together, and my sister-in-law Anne and I have had fun taking classes at Impress, too.

There is a section in the back of each catalog that shows a description of the classes they offer. Classes are $25 - $35 for a 90 - 120 minute class where students get hands-on experience learning new techniques for card-making, book binding, and other paper crafts. I didn’t understand what the “Inchie Cards” class was all about and made a note to look for more information about it online.

I visited several blogs and found out exactly what an inchie is.  Inchies are tiny collages on a small 1” square. They can be stamped and colored with colored pencils, water colors, markers… or they can be tiny 1” collages layered with scrap paper, wrapping paper, magazine cut-outs, vintage ads, ribbon, sewing patterns, embellishments - whatever! Apparently, some people have inchie clubs that trade and collect these tiny cards. I’m not interested in collecting them, and the thought of making something in a tiny 1” space did NOT sound like fun… but the more I thought about it over the week, I decided I wanted to try it!

I was inspired by a box of Square Stax I got on a super clearance sale at Michael’s a few months ago, and was looking for something to do with these colorful cut out squares.  They seemed like good frames for inchies!  Perhaps I could make some cute magnets or card embellishments with them.

On a rainy day last May, it seemed like a good day to do something with crafts at home so I cut up some white cardstock into tiny 1” squares and made my first inchie! 

((((I have no idea why the pics look stretched - they looked normal when I viewed them in the editing mode))))

my box of 14,400 Square Stax

blank inchies

I made this design with my markers and then added some glittery accents with some other markers

I attached a metal flower to the center and voila - my first inchie!

All done! I mounted it on a couple of Square Stax.