Watercolour Rainbow Inchies

If you've never tried making inchies before, you absolutely must! They're so much fun and easy to make. Inchies are basically 1" X 1" squares that you decorate and display in clusters, which makes them look really good, even if individually they may not be so impressive. They can be made from paper, cardboard, textile, leather, wood, even mini canvases, anything really. And they don't need to be strictly 1" X 1" - they can be bigger (or smaller) as long as they are square shaped.

I was browsing the Internet looking for ideas to make my own inchies and I bumped into this image of rainbow inchies, which totally inspired me and I instantly knew that I had to try this.

I used a sheet of 300gsm smooth watercolour paper, my trusted Winsor & Newton watercolours, and the indespensible Uniball UM-153 white gel pen. I started by cutting the watercolour paper into 1" strips. This is very quick and easy if you use an A4 paper trimmer.

Next, I painted six strips with colours of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet and I cut them into 1-inch squares once dry. At this point, I decided that I was going to decorate my inchies with just the white pen, so I needed to make the colours deeper and stronger so that the pen marks would stand out against the background.  I applied another two coats of watercolours, making a darker border on each square.  When they were completely dry, I started doodling on the inchies with the white pen. I was bit lazy and I used the same six designs for each colour strip, but you can come up with individual designs for all of the squares if you want.

Here are my results.  The first photo shows the inchies before I added the doodling. I'm very happy with how they turned out in the end.  This is a fun and rewarding project to try. You literally can't go wrong with it - the inchies will always look stunning when presented in a group. I'm sure I will be making some more in the future using different designs and media.

Watercolur background for the rainbow inchies

Rainbow inchies complete with doodling using a white gel pen