It’s the tenth of the month, which means it’s time for another Inspired by!

Awesome Riikka and I challenge each other each month to create something with a theme or thing in mind.

This time the theme was a no-brainer: Berlin!

Last week Riikka and I met up in Berlin. Riikka was going there on vacation with her family and Harold and I love Berlin, so we decided to travel there in the same week. We spent a lovely Wednesday together and it was awesome!

So… You probably know that this challenge has no rules, right? Well… There is one rule. That rule is that we share a project on the 10th of the month, at 11.00/12.00 our time.

Riikka has met that rule e v e r y single time. I on the other hand bend it from time to time… And today I’m going to break it.

I really, really, really wanted to make a travel art journal (spread).

I even took a journal and my handy-dandy little toiletry bag with art supplies with me on the trip… Which I opened exactly once… to grab my scissors for something totally not related to art journaling… Only to find out that I had left them at home!

I failed miserably, but no harm done. I have this:

• A couple of sketchbooks I bought as a ‘souvenir’
• A note book with journaling about the trip
• Memorabilia (already organized by date)
• DSLR raw files + iPhone jpgs

And I have a plan:

I’m choosing the smallest sketchbook to work in. In has 19 spreads and I figure that will be enough for four days Berlin…

I’ve made a list of all the things we’ve done and I’ve planned what should appear on each spread.

It comes down to: three spreads for (mostly travel) day 1, six each for full days 2 and 3 and then another 4,5 spreads for (departure) day 4.

Then I distributed the memorabilia over the sketchbook and glued it down when I was certain it would be on the right spread:

I use Matte Medium as adhesive. The downside is that you have to wait for it to dry before you can go on to the next page. I’ve tried to speed things up with my heat gun, but as you can see that caused my thermal printed museum ticket to blacken.

This small step took waaaay more time than I had anticipated!

And I did not have a lot of time… I had three days to complete this and the weather was so nice and my husband still had a couple of days off work and my brother was throwing a party and…

I do not have anything more to show you.

There are spreads that are still empty. I think all pages might need a coat of gesso. I’ve uploaded all my photos but they still need editing. I haven’t started writing nor sketching… The matte medium on this page hasn’t even dried yet!

So… I’m changing the rule.

I will keep working on the journal. I will post regular updates on my progress. I will finish this journal. And that will be my take on this Inspired by.

Now please hurry on over to Riikka’s blog, because she has worked very hard to get her Inspired by Berlin project done on time and it’s going to be awesome!