Size matters...

...and sometimes, smaller is better.

I have always preferred smaller formats in my artwork, from greeting cards to paint canvasses to my graphic design work --(I hate designing bus shelters and billboards -- and fortunately, I have a colleague who likes that work, so she takes on all of the "big" design jobs, whenever possible.)

So when I started following the latest mixed-media trend of creating "inchies," I was not at all surprised to find that I love them!!!! I think the trend originated with fabric artists, who began by making and swapping 1-inch by 1-inch squares of fabric, quilted and embellished with beads and fibers. I saw these miniature masterpieces for the first time last year on someone's blog, and I knew I wanted to try my hand at paper versions. I must confess that the first few I made were a real challenge. A one-inch square is a very, very small art canvas, so it's easy to overdue it. But a dozen inchies later, I was hooked!

I developed some design guidelines for myself that made working in this teeny, tiny format very satisfying, and I'll be sharing them in a class that I'm teaching at Stampassion (a wonderful rubber stamp and mixed-media arts store near my home) beginning this Saturday. This is the display board I made for the class, with my first (but definitely not my last) "batch" of inchies.