all in an inch

Watercolor inchies and a salute to LuminArte!

We have been meaning to post for quite some time on one of our most favorite techniques for coloring Inchie Squares - using Twinkling H20's to create a watercolor background. But before we get to the details we wanted to give a salute to LuminArte, the company that has been making these fabulous little glitter pot paints for many years. Sadly, it has just come to our attention that they are going out of business. According to their web site, the response to this news has been overwhelming. Therefore they have decided that they will continue to manufacture Twinkling H20's for a limited time so we can all stock up! So when you finish reading here...be sure and visit them at luminarteinc.com!!

Do you remember when you first learned about watercoloring? It was probably in the first or second grade and your teacher likely grew frustrated for all the improper handling of the brushes or casual use of water vs. paint. It wasn't until I was an adult that I revisited this whole experience and learned how much fun you can really have with watercolor paints...and like they say...it's all about the water...

 

   

For this project you only need a handful of white Inchie Squares, Twinkling H20 paints, a brushpen, rubber stamp (and ink) and colored pencils. 

Speaking of water...and brushes...if you haven't used a brushpen you must give one a try. It's like a fountain pen, but filled with water. They are made by several different companies but be sure and get one that has a baffle or filter between the water reservoir and the pen tip. It's what controls the flow of water through the brush tip. Also, they are practically self cleaning, eliminating the need for a container of water.  

 

Begin by moistening the paint pots with a few drops of water. You can do this easily with the brush pen by very gently squeezing the barrel. As you do this it will 'push' drops of water out through the brush hairs.

 

 

At it's most simplistic, there are two kinds of watercolor painting...dry and wet. When you bring a brush with paint to DRY paper the paint will stay just where you put it - this is called DRY painting. The opposite of this is when you bring a brush with paint to a WET paper - this is called MAGIC! Begin by moistening the white Inchie Square with water. As you practice you will learn the right amount of water to put down...too little and the paint doesn't bleed out...too much and you have a puddle on your hands and the edges of the Inchie Square will curl a bit as it dries. Amazingly, the solid core white Inchie Squares are of such high quality material that they react in a similar fashion to a #130lb hot press watercolor paper...they will absorb a lot of water...or Copic Marker...or any other moisture laden medium. (if you are painting more than one at a time you may have to go back once or twice and apply additional 'layers' of water to the squares)

 

 

Since you have everything out - it's always fun to do a batch of these at a time. Remember, you are not creating a painting (although that's another idea for an inchie!) rather, just a background; or a portion of the Inchie Square. Since the paint pots have been moistened, it's easy to 'pick up' a concentration of color on the end of the brush tip - you don't need much at all. Touch it a couple of times to the water prepared inchie and you'll see the magic as it spreads and bleeds. The hardest part is stopping....now! Don't overwork it, just a few gentle 'dabs'. You'll be pleasantly surprised at what happens after 10 or 15 minutes as the paint and water interact and spread over the Inchie Square. Not only that, but as it dries you will see the gentle shimmer that is characteristic of Twinkling H20 paints. This color happens to be Pink Grapefruit.

 

   

A very cool feature of the brushpens is how easy they are to clean when you want to switch colors. Just 'draw' the brush across a paper towel, turning the tip along the towel as you drag it. If there is a lot of paint on the brush you can also gently squeeze the barrel releasing a bit of water. Do this a few times and pretty soon the brush will not leave any more color - and voila - you are ready to paint again!

 

 

This purple is called French Lilac.

 

 

Now for a green one...Key Lime.

 

 

And finally the blue...Ocean Wave.

 

   

These were fairly dry when this picture was taken; you can see the subtle differences in color concentration and how the paint 'moved' as it merged and bled with the water.

 

   

Next step...to stamp the image. Make sure that everything is really dry. After all that work you don't want to put ink down on damp paper only to watch it fizzle. What you see is the very top portion of the rubber stamp that was pictured earlier - it's the Lockhart Sweet Peas #2100. This stamp is larger than an Inchie Square and so you only stamp a bit of it. The easiest way to do this is to ink the stamp with Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black ink and turn it rubber side up. Take a minute and think through two things: what portion of the stamp do you want on the square, and where on your watercolored square do you want that image? Now, bring the front side of your square down to the inked surface.

 

 

Finish the inchie by coloring with Prismacolor pencils. Their opaque coverage holds well, especially if you are coloring over areas that have some color from the paints. These three colors are Hot Pink, Pink and Limepeel - but any assortment of floral colors would be perfect!

Can you imagine the 'MAGIC' that might occur if using more than one color on each square?!

Our favorite adhesive

One thing for certain, everyone has an opinion about adhesive. Go into any craft store and you will find many, many different types. Whether you are an occasional stamper and scrapbooker or a consumate craftsperson you probably have at least a half dozen different adhesive products. And whichever one you choose it's probably driven by the task. Are you adhering something large or small? Is it a paper product or an embellishment? Is it porous or not? It can get really confusing.

I'm sure we have all experienced an "adhesive disaster" such as using a moist type of glue on a paper that resulted in buckling as it dried. Or the two sided thing with rubber cement or spray adhesive and realizing you put it in the wrong place. Or edge residue...a personal pet peeve...that icky sticky tiny ball of glue that appears at the very edge of something. And what about getting it on your fingers...aaarrrggghhh! We could go on and on.

When we started Inchie Arts a little over a year ago it had been after years of teaching art and papercrafting classes. No matter the class or the project there always seemed to be 'glue issues'. So in addition to researching what we feel is the cadillac of materials for the Inchie Art products we felt we had to explore the world of adhesives too.

 

If you look closely you can just see the very light blue strip of adhesive dots.

We have fallen in love with a fairly new product made by a well known company. It is a permanent adhesive made of a blanket of tiny diamond shaped dots that roll out of a dispenser. It is made by Tombo and is part of The Craft Collection. (If you are out shopping for this product make sure you get the right one because Tombo does make a few other roller style adhesive products). There are several different companies making roller type dispensers but alas, we have fallen for this one.

Here's why...

• It is REALLY easy to use. Some of the other tape roller products on the market are hard to apply - you either have to press really hard or they are hard to 'start'. You barely have to press with this one and it 'grabs' right away.
• You can apply it in a straight line or hug the edge of a curved shape with ease.
• It doesn't pull or break, so when you lift it from the paper, the adhesive stops right when you stop.

• It's lightweight but really strong. You can use it on the lightest of Inchie Papers or on the thickness of an Inchie Square. It works really well for ribbon too!
• Yes, it's permanent...but you do have time to reposition an Inchie Square if you need to adjust things a bit.

 

• It works well in small spaces - perfect for putting just a small strip of adhesive at the very edges of an Inchie Square or on the back of a cut out image to put on a square.
• You don't have to thread the refills! The dispenser is made of two halves. On half is the 'refill' and the other half is the cover. When it's time to replace the adhesive you just snap the half with the adhesive spools to the cover piece.
• And, it's acid free, photo safe, non toxic and safe for use with archival materials.

It comes in two different size dispensers. You may find that you prefer one over the other by the way it feels in your hand. Also, the larger dispenser holds 591" of adhesive while the smaller holds 472". Both are 1/3" wide.

We discovered this product on our own. We also found that as we traveled around teaching Inchie Arts classes in different cities that it was often hard to find. So we contacted the Tombo company to ask them what was up. They explained that many stores are still just discovering this product and that it will take consumers like us to nudge our local stores to carry it. In the meantime they are out and about visiting stores to make sure everyone knows about this wonderful new product! 

(if you are a store interested in carrying these Tombo products give us a shout and we can put you in direct contact with their wholesale division)   

Here comes the sun!

 

It's amazing what a day or two of sunshine (but very cold temperatures.) can do to lift your spirits! Here in the northwest we relish it when it happens!

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that we often take photos of the cards that we send out to stores with Inchie Arts product orders. When we do this and post them on the blog, we might not always take step by step photos, but will provide the information on the stamps and coloring supplies we used. 

This card was created by direct stamping on a white Inchie Square with the Lockhart Itty Bitty Good Morning Sunshine #3061 with Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo black ink. An assortment of Copic markers was used beginning with overall color with Y000. If you look carefully you can see how the others colors were used to blend and accent. The Stardust pen was used at the end to add 'rays' that run outwards from the sun. A tiny square of black paper was cut to 1 1/16" to give a faint black detail edge around/behind the inchie square and the darker orange square is from the Inchie Papers assortment.The Inchie Note is from the Wild Sherbet collection and the color band was created with a postal edge scissor on a strip of Lasting Impressions, Buttercup Yellow Dots paper.

(Look for a store listing of Inchie Arts supplies here...and also a direct link to the Lockhart Stamp Company here)

Hopefully it's sunny wherever you are!!

 

It's the same stamp...really!

 

Several posts ago we created a card titled, "Mahalo" (the card on the left). In that posting we colored the flowers so they resembled the fragrant flower from Hawaii, the Plumeria. This time around we colored them so they resemble their namesake, the Violet Cupcake stamp #2102 from Lockhart.

In the case of both of these cards, the image was direct stamped onto a white Inchie Square with Tsukineko Tuxedo Black Ink. The orientation of the stamped image is a bit different on each card - but shows just more than half of the image. On the mahalo card the right side of the image runs off the side - and in the violet card the left side of the image runs off the edge.

 

 

This is how the stamped image appears 'whole', if you were to stamp it on a piece of white card stock.

 

After stamping...color (with Copic markers) the flowers all over with BV00. Then from the center of the flower to about 2/3rds outwards on the petals use BV02. Complete the petals with just a 'dot' of the darkest color V17 where the petals join at the middle of the flower. Color the very middle of the flower with a bright yellow Y15 (or a Prismacolor pencil).  The leaves are two tone with a combination of YG11 and G82. The cupcake wrapper is Copic E43. Finish the Inchie Square by coloring the background and edges with Y000. 

The Inchie Card is from the Blue/Lavender assortment with a photo style patterned paper from Paper Pizazz called 'pansies'. The checked paper is from an Inchie Paper assortment pack. The finishing touch is the Lockhart 'fresh from the garden' sentiment #10013.

Hmm...I wonder if there are any other fun colored flowers that we can create with this image?

(check your local paper crafts or stamping store for all the Inchie Arts products - or find a store near you on the web site www.inchiearts.com)