This morning I posted my Inspired by-project for this month and I promised I would be back this evening to tell you a little bit more about it.

I went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel right after it came out in the Netherlands back in March. I didn’t take any notes. Wes Anderson’s films are always overflowing with visual interesting stuff that I figured I would remember more than enough details to create something fun, even without notes..

And then I forgot about the challenge for a while…

In the meantime my friend Birgit blogged about a wonderful mixed media book. Lucky me found out I could request it via my library and I haven’t stopped painting in my art journal since!

One of the many aha-moments I had reading the book and working through it, was that if I’m not comfortable sketching something freehand, I can choose to trace an existing image onto deli paper and I can glue that onto a spread as a jumping off point. (I’m quite sure many of you are now going ‘Duh!!’)

So… I loosely traced the face from the cover of a magazine. The original artwork is by an awesome artist called Jim ter Kuile!

My choice of colours came of course from The Grand Budapest Hotel. The red from the carpets, the purple from the hotel uniforms, the light blue from the pastry packaging and the ombre pink from the hotel itself.

The keys play a role in the film as well, as Riikka explains in her Inspired by-blog post.

The funny thing about the K&Company keys I used, is that I think they must have been one of my earliest scrapbook purchases back in the day and it appears you can still buy them!!! I have no idea why I kept them around for so long, but they sure were perfect for this page.

The last element I added to the page was the title ‘L’Air de Panache‘. L’Air de Panache is monsieur Gustave H.’s favourite cologne. For the lettering I was inspired by a fun Creative Lettering workshop by Marieke Blokland, last Saturday at Scrapdelight!

That’s it from me, for now!

If you haven’t seen them yet, please check out Riikka’s awesome The Grand Budapest-inspired projects on her blog!