Road Trip, Anyone?

I was invited to join a group on flickr called Altered Dominos & Other Altered Game Pieces. This group has some very talented people involved, and group forum discussions are lively and helpful. To be totally honest I had not altered a domino yet when I joined. The invitation to join was based on my bingo collage pendant, as it is an altered bingo card.

One of the group discussions was that of a swap for an altered domino keychain. The theme for the swap was “travel”. I signed up because I had yet to participate in a swap of any kind and have really wanted to connect with other artists like this for a while. I guess I jumped into this group with both feet being new to both domino altering and swaps. But I needed a challenge so I went for it.

My grandmother gave me about 700 very old black wood dominos to work with as well as some plastic white dominos. But they have collected dust in my studio for years. Now I had a reason to bust them out and get to work!

When I think of travel I think “road trip”. My parents had this huge old station wagon when I was growing up and we would take road trips all over the place in it. I practically grew up in the back of “Old Blue”. So my travel domino needed a car image.



I found a clip art piece I really liked and colored it in using Photoshop. The words came from an old book. The back of the domino has a map collage. The Route 66 charm is actually a button I’ve been hoping to use in my art for some time. It was just waiting for this project! I ordered the little license plate charm from theginghamgirl on Etsy as well as the keychain part from SimplyCrafting, whose shop has since closed. The domino is sealed with Mod Podge first then a generous coating of clear acrylic spray sealer. The blue on the domino is made with alcohol inks.

Off into the mail it went yesterday to takeabreak, the organizer of the group on flickr. I hope she likes it as much as I had fun creating it! I have signed up for more swaps in the future so I’ll have more dominos to share!