First Friday Art Class for January 2014 - Inchies!

There is a really fun art trend going on right now and we jumped right onto the bandwagon! Have you heard of inchies? They are itty bitty pieces of art - 1" x 1" that can be used for tons of different things or just stand alone as a tiny, little masterpiece.

I got all my ideas for today's class from THIS POST on Craftster by Phizzychic. And also THIS POST from Kira Nichols.

Before class, I cut strips of paper to be 1-1/2" wide (I decided that 1" x 1" would be just a little too small for us to work with--so our inchies are a little bit bigger). I painted the strips with juicy, wet watercolor. I dripped on them and let them be smeary and irregular. This adds to the interest of the little squares later.

I just used basic white card stock for these and they turned out great. 

I would have loved to have the girls do this step so they could do this project from start to finish, but there just wasn't time in class to paint them and let them dry and then cut the squares.

So once the strips dried, I cut them into 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" squares.

BUT...first things first...our treat today was PRETZEL TREATS because they are tiny, cute squares and they are very colorful--just like our art was going to be today!!

When the girls arrived I showed them some samples and then we discussed things you could do with your finished inchies. 

You can:

Make a book out of them (this is what we did in class today)

Add them to a card

Frame a bunch of them in a large frame

Make a bookmark

Add one (or more) to the front of a plain journal or notebook

...or about a million other fun ideas

And then they got to work. 

With very little instruction, they were busy and excited to make their little books. They each did 8 separate inchies.

We took those 8 inchies and we glued them back to back using a basic glue stick, punched holes in the side, and attached them together using jewelry jump rings. (ETA: we had a bit of trouble with the jump rings. We couldn't always get them to close enough and some pages fell out. A friend of mine did these later and used safety pins to hold hers closed and it looked really cute. She tied a tiny ribbon on each pin. You could also very easily just tie them with some bakers twine or sting. Just don't tie them so tight you can't turn the pages. I also wonder if you could use those earrings that look like little continuous circles?? If you find a great solution, leave a comment and let me know.)

And their books turned out wonderfully! And so fun and colorful!

I'm hoping each girl will go home and create lots and lots more little inchie artwork!!

See you next month for a sweet treat themed February class!