Berlin Tiles - Nathalie's Creative Squad

Moikka and happy Friday! Today I'm sharing my May project for Nathalie's Creative Squad with you. This time the topic is "In the City". It's about being inspired by our previous travels, drawing inspiration about the colors and flavor of the place. You can see the original post here (link) at Nathalie's blog. And if you want to see more city inspired pieces, here's a link to my team mate Maura's project (link). 

I was excited to get this Billboard Model Kit to play with. I drew inspiration from a couple of different cities or travels.

The biggest influence was Berlin where we traveled for a family vacation back in 2015. There was a lot to take in but somehow the most vibrant mental images are of grungy surfaces and tiles. We had a room in a hotel/hostel that was built inside an old apartment building. The staircase of the place was just amazing – it screamed history with the polished wooden handrail, ironwork columns for the handrail, painted walls with decorative motifs and a tile laid floor just behind of the massive front door. I can’t remember the actual patterns of the tiles, but I remember feeling a little sad each morning when we left to go about the town as a couple of the tiles were missing and there were gaps in the beautifully decorated floor.

I chose the FAN-tastic stamp set to represent the tiles and their patterns. I used three different stamp inks to stamp the patterns and colored some of the tiles blue in a later stage of creating. I’m pretty sure the Berlin tile floor was in the colors of browns and cream, but still I went with blue as the accent. Even though I brought a lot of the brown to the piece by inking the edges of the tiles, I guess the blue has its origin on another trip and city. The blue takes me to 2013, to Amsterdam, Utrecht and especially Amersfoort. The blue is related to a tile Marsha Valk showed me when visiting her beautiful home.

But besides Berlin and Amersfoort, there’s still one more city that inspired a detail to this piece. That’s Ischia. The colors are all wrong for that but coming off the ferry from mainland Italy to the island, there was a flowerpot with vibrant red geranium on a windowsill of one bright white building. Sunny day made the colors so vibrant, it felt like saturation was up by 100. The window with the flower was the only window on that side of the house and the flowerpot got etched into my brain vividly. So, while my piece has tulips and they are blue, the idea of this detail came from that mental image.

I recorded a little video while working with the billboard. The camera angle is a bit off in the end as I assembled the piece before adding the finishing details, but I hope you can still see my process.

Thank you for stopping by today! Wishing you a lovely week and great travels though the different memories!

Materials:

FAN-tastic Small cling rubber stamp set
Boundless Brooklyn: Billboard Model Kit
Ranger: Archival Ink Jet Black, Sepia, Hydrangea
Ranger: Distress Ink Vintage Photo, Faded Jeans, Chipped Sapphire, Tumbled Glass
Ranger inking tool
Tim Holtz Paper doll
Cricut Maker
White 160g cardstock
Grey acrylic paint (CC Hobby: Plus Color)
Double sided adhesive sheet
Paint brush
Scissors