Inspired by... Berlin

It's again the 10th of the month and time for the "Inspired by" creation! But what is Inspired by? Every month awesome Marsha and I choose a subject to be inspired by. It can be a movie (link), an item (link), a designer (link), a painting (link) or a piece of music (link). Then we make something inspired by that theme or a piece of art and share it with you and each other on the 10th of the month.

photo credits: Berlin wall - my own; Charlottenburg Palace - Antiquesdiva; United Buddy Bears - United Buddy Bears

If you follow me on Instagram you know by now that we took a trip to Berlin recently. I also mentioned the trip on a recent blog post but what you don't not know from the post is that we met Marsha also in there! 

When we started planning our family trip I think I was kidding how it would be fun to meet Marsha and Berlin was in the continent. But what really happened was that Marsha and her husband took a vacation at the same time, drove for more than 6 hours to Germany and Berlin and we spend one day together in the city! That was really amazing and I'm so thankful for them for that! It was so great to meet them again and spend the day together. We went exploring this beautiful castle a bit side to the city center, but just a 5 minute underground drive - Charlottenburg Palace. 

But what the trip resulted on top of some great memories was a Inspired By challenge. As we both arrived home just a few days before the IB posting date we were cutting it close! I actually had a back up plan also - a travel minialbum which I'll post in near future. 

Above is a triplet of photos that were the inspiration to my piece. If you'd like to see what Marsha made this time, here's a link to her post (link)! 

Funnily enough my biggest inspiration was something I didn't take a single photo of! That is the United Buddy Bears (link) that were all across Berlin. Mostly in front of souvenir shops and shopping centers but also here and there around. They also tour the world so they might even visited a town near you. They were here in Helsinki back in 2010. I actually searched some souvenir shops if they would have a bear I could alter but as the bears are done by different artists a) there wasn't a plain white bear available and b) the prices of the decorated ones were too high for an altered piece. 

My second inspiration was the Palace we visited together with the Valks - Charlottenburg. It was beautiful! My favorites were a few rooms that were decorated with leaf silver or similar instead of gold but as mos of the rooms had gold I added some gold touches to my piece. Also the picture from Charlottenburg interior is from the net as in order to take photos inside you needed to buy a permit. It was only 4 euros, but the pictures couldn't be published anywhere so I decided just to enjoy and be satisfied with my outside photos. 

The third inspiration source was a picture I took in a shopping center. Although people recommended visiting the Berlin wall, we didn't go there this time. But there was a piece of the wall in the near by shopping mall! So I took a quick photo of it and ended up using it as my inspiration as well. The layers are partly because of that, partly because it's just the way I work. 

And there's also a fourth source of inspiration and it's the country and city themselves as words. The country code of Germany is DE and the Berlin starts with BE... So because I couldn't have a bear, I went with letters! 

And here they are - my two letters. Of course I could have done the whole word 'Berlin' or the start 'Ber' but as I thought about future use for the piece I decided that the verb 'be' would be the best and useful. 

I worked with acrylic paints, Archival ink, stencils and stamps mostly building layers and overlapping the colors. From the picture underneath you can see how the letters evolved. First I painted the kraft colored papermache letters with gesso and stenciled the first layer with pink, yellow and turquoise using a circle pattern. On top I used other stencils and then added also the colors with my fingers (second picture). Then I dried the acrylic paints and added some black stamping on top using two different stamps. As the contrast between the black and the multicolored paints was too high, I added some stenciling on top to tone it down a little. 

Then the piece needed some light so I grabbed my gesso and added it both through a stencil and also as splashes (fifth picture). After drying I then added the golden touches using a double sided adhesive sheet and Fab Foil. As the last touches I first added some black and white pen work and then brought the colors back a little adding just a few touches of paint here and there.

There's my BErlin inspired craft - BErlin wall layering, Charlottenburg gold and the altered idea BEhind United Buddy BEars!

Thank you for stopping by today!

Materials: Prima Marketing, Ranger, Wow Embossing Powder, Sharpie, Design Memory Craft