inchies

Silhouette for inchies

Posted on by debbrooner

I used my Silhouette for a lot of my inchies this month, and it performed even better than I expected.

All of the teacups and the “2 for tea” were cut with it.  These little guys are all smaller than one inch, yet cut very well.  My favorite one is the watercolor background one with the teacup with leaves on it. There are 4 different designs in the set and would work for inchies, cards, and scrapbook pages.

two_tea_cups_C00384_23067; two_delicate_tea_cups_C00385_23067; 4_flourished_tea_cup_set_C00656; 2_for_tea_word_phrase_C01176; tea_set_C00651_2581

The POW! glitter paper on the pink cupcake is by American Crafts. It cuts beautifully.  I had tried other glitter papers, but my machine was pretty vocal about not really liking to cut them.  This paper has a great glimmer but doesn’t slough off glitter bits all over.   Very nice.  The middle cupcake was also cut with my Sil using white cardstock, colored with Bic markers and then I added some Stickles for shine.

3_cupcakes_C00869_20509; Cupcake_0241

The color challenge for this month was teal, cream and orange. I had purchased an American Craft package of pastel colors so I used them for this project.  It has a nice texture on one side and is smooth on the other.  It cuts very well.  It was a lot of fun to just pick my quilt patterns, cut them out and glue them on my inchies.  I used a Sakura glitter pen to do the stitching since a black pen overpowered the designs.

quilt_blocks_1_-_set_of_4_Coo355_17986; quilt_blocks_2_-_set_of_4_Coo356_17986

 

 

 

Finally, I made this Easter inchie book. For all of the right-hand pages I used these Easter blocks.  Love the colors- the American Craft cardstock again.

block_easter_C00495_20509

These are the left-hand pages.  I tried to cut the letters for the words, but they were just too small, hence the bad handwriting .  I used some leftover shapes from the blocks for these pages as well.  Gets me in the mood for making some Easter cards!

 

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Silhouette makes great inchie envelopes!

Posted on by debbrooner

One of the June swaps I participated in was” inchie envelopes”.  There was a template available for one, but I wanted to see if I could come up with something more interesting.  Enter my Silhouette!  For several of the envies I just took  square envelopes and resized them to 1.25″.  Super duper easy! The turquoise and red one is actually a CD holder. The pink and brown one with  the flower flap and the purple one with 4 scalloped sides and belly band were ones I made myself.  They were easy to make as well and add a little sizzle.  Here is a picture of the back sides of the envies.

Fun little birds and flower cut-outs embelished the envies.

The only thing better than getting an inchie is getting one in an envelope!curved_envelope_with_liner_C00069_41853; envelope_1529;pocket_envelope_C02775_1; card_cd_2119

Here are the twinchies I swapped this month.

The bird is a Print and Cut and I made the french “bird” label using the 2 piece frame and some text.

vintage_bird_set_print_cut_C00112_41853; 2_piece_frame_C00568_20509

Heart, lace border, and tiny tag are die cuts  as well.

Heart 1028; elegant_posts_border_C00437_19547; tags_essentials_C00034_27205

Have a geat Monday

Inchie Folder and Polymer Inchies

Posted on by debbrooner

 One of the members of my Yahoo Inchies 1×1 group, Juliet, sent me a clever inchie folder. I loved it but it only held 2 sets of 4 inchies each.  It was great for our mingles, but our swaps were 6 inchies each so I wanted something that would hold multiples of 6.  This folder holds 6 sets of 6 inchies each (36 inchies total) and fits into a standard business size envelope (4 1/8″ x 9 1/2″).

I started with a piece of Bazzill cardstock because it is a good heavy weight.  I cut it to a rectangle that was 8″ x 9 1/4″ and folded it to make a 4″ x 9 1/4″ folder.

I used lightweight decorative paper for the inserts.  I cut 6 pieces that were 4″ x 3 3/4″ and then folded the short edges down 3/4″ .  I ended up with inserts that were 3/4″ x 2 3/8″.

To attach the inserts I first ran a line of glue on the backs and then placed them evenly inside the folder.  To make the pockets I measured off 1 1/4″ spaces and then placed staples there.

  I will someday try running lines of sewing down the pockets instead of staples.  This would keep from having the bumps that you get with the staples.  I’m just not sure how sturdy the pockets would be.  If someone tries this , let me know how it works.

Polymer Guild Inchie Swap

     The Mile High Polyer Clay Guild had an inchie swap this April.  These are a few of the inchies I made.

These are a few of the inchies I received.  The diversity of techniques was amazing: faux raku, mokume gane, textures, transfers, tiny fish canes, flower canes, faux malachite,  multiple layers of color covered with resin, lots of PearlEx and some awesome 3D ones.  I loved this swap!

Fixing Mistakes

Posted on by debbrooner

 

In everyone’s card making endeavors will  come a  time when a  mistake is made. Mistakes are frustrating, but not fatal.  Here are some ideas to help you deal with those mistakes.

 If you get completely done, pick the card up and realize it opens on the wrong side you can:

1) Cut off the front panel, trim it down to a smaller size and apply to a coordinating color blank card.

2) Rotate your card 90 degrees .  

You  stamp your sentiment ( or any other stamped image) and it looks really bad  You can:

1) Stamp the sentiment on the same color of cardstock and then back it with a coordinating color. Place it on top of the mistake

2) Place an embellishment on the mistake (Do you suppose that the first person to use an embellishment did so to cover up a bad spot?)

Maybe after finishing the card you don’t like it. You can:

1) Walk away from it for a while.

2) Add more stuff to it.

Another possibility:

1) Cut or tear the card front into pieces and use to make serendipity squares.

2) Cut the pretty parts into ATC’s, moo cards or inchies.

As a finel resort:

1) Give up and throw it away after salvaging all you can off of it.

The First Cut Is The Deepest

Posted on by debbrooner

 

Wahoo! I just got a Silhouette SD for my (early) birthday!   So far  I love it.

Perhaps a little explanation is in order for those who aren’t familiar with the Silhouette.  It is an electronic die-cutting machine that hooks up to your computer.  You pick a pattern or letters, size it to you specifications, and send the info to the cutter, and just like that you have your design. 

I knew that it worked well for large formats but wanted to see if it could do a good job on inchie-sized projects. The answer is definitely yes. I was very pleased that most of the patterns I picked cut beautifully at the 1″ size. On the top row the leaf, the dragonfly, and the bird were all cut using the Silhouette.  The bottom row shows the sparkle, the heart, and the flying bird.  The heart looked like like it needed something else so I just poked holes in each iof the scallops and added embroidery thread.

On this ATC I used the Sil on the leaf (the same one as the one above) and the letters . One of the biggest reasons I wanted this machine was to cut letters and phrases to my specifications.

“Imagine” was a design that was available to download from the Silhouette Store.  The store has hundreds of designs to choose from. They are quite inexpensive and once downoaded, are yours forever.  There are other sites on the web that offer free designs as well.

For more info, go here.

Now who wants to come to my house and play????

Masking Tape With A Twist

Posted on by debbrooner

One of the May swaps for  my  “Inchies 1×1”  group was an ATC with a masking tape background.  Since I would be using a pear inchie on the ATC I  wanted to incorporate the word “pear” into the masking tape.  I could have just made my masking tape background and then stamped the word on the top, but I wanted the background to have more depth.    

 I started by taping a piece of freezer paper, shiny side up, to  my work surface.  I then placed strips of masking tape side by side on the paper.  Using Stazon ink, I stamped “pear” with several different stamp sets on the tape.  As you will notice, I goofed and stamped some letters the wrong way.  Since I was going to be tearing the tape into pieces I could throw the bad bits away. 

   

After the stamping was done  I pulled the stamped tape off of the paper and began adding torn pieces to the cardstock ATC backing.  A note here: originally I used only tape that was stamped with words on the ATC, but it seemed too busy for me so, I decided to use a mixture of stamped and plain masking tape.  I liked that result better.   

stamped tape only

 

stamped and plain tape

 

I chose to color my background with alcohol inks (Adirondak and Pinata), then swiped a brown Memories ink pad over the entire ATC.
 
 With the addition of some  stamped ferns (Hero Arts) and die- cut leaves (Sizzix) the ATC itself was ready for the inchie.
 
I stamped a collage image (Stampers Anonymous) onto kraft paper and then cut the pear portion out, colored it, added a brad, and backed it witha small scalloped square die cut (Spellbinders Nestabilities).
 
Here is the finished project:
 
Have a happy, crafty week, and don’t forget to embellish !