Domino Pendant Collage with Mulberry Paper Background

I decided to do another step by step tutorial for making wood domino pendants.  I will tell you some of the products I use.  No one is paying me to endorse their products.  I try to find the most cost-effective product that performs well.  Recently I did a tutorial on sanding and priming the dominoes, so I’m going to start with primed wood dominoes, see Altering a Wood Domino, Part 1 Sanding , Part 2 Prepping.

Above you can see that I’ve resized some public domain images and printed them out on my printer.  I always print them on thin paper and use the “Best” quality setting on my printer.

Some of the primer has leaked onto the number side of my domino.  I’m going to be finishing this side, so I sand off all the primer.  I want a clean surface to paint.

Before I even begin, I want to get a general idea of how I’m going to lay out my little domino collage.

After I know the basic design of my collage, I can drill the holes.  Sometimes the holes will be small, sometimes large.  If the design is in landscape mode, I’ll have to drill two holes.  Notice that the dominoes are not perfectly square.  I don’t care.  To me the beauty of working with recycled or reused items is that they aren’t necessarily perfect.

I’m using a Krylon® paint that look like gold plate.  Krylon paint can be hard to find, but it is my favorite all purpose spray paint.

The background of my domino collage is going to be mulberry paper.  Mulberry paper, like tissue paper, is very forgiving.  The texture hides a lot.  The paper soaks up the gel medium well.  I put a generous amount down on the smooth side of the domino and lay the paper on top.

Since I coat both sides of the paper with gel medium, if some of the gel medium leaks to the front all is well.  If I were using a different paper, I would still coat the front of the paper to seal it.  I use my finger to smooth out the top while the gel medium is still wet.

Just to show you how easy it is to work with mulberry paper, I tore off a few pieces of paper and added them on top of the previous layer.  The new pieces just blend right in.

When the glue is dry, I use a toothpick to poke the paper through the hole.  If the hole is large, I add a little gel medium to the inside of the hole to hold the paper in place.

I place the embellishments in place before I finish sealing the domino.  I want to make sure that I don’t want to add more paper images.   Above you can see I’m adding beads, broken jewelry, vintage findings and crystals.

I pull the embellishments off and seal all of the papers with a few coats of lacquer.  If I can find it, I use Deft® Clear Wood Finish.  Another very good choice is American Accent® Clear Top Coat by Rust-oleum®.

After the lacquer has dried and the pendants can be handled, I start adding embellishments.  I use Gem-Tac® or Aleene’s® Jewel-It® to glue down the embellishment on top of my domino.  I use wire to wire-wrap my beads and create the bail for my pendant.

Sometimes I have a complete idea when I start altering.  In this case, I knew I was going to make a leather necklace with the cord going through the pendant.  I wanted that little red bead to sit flat against the copper lily pad finding.

I never know which directions the other pendants might take me.  They may be a centerpiece or they may be another component on a larger piece.  I’ll just put them away and wait for some inspiration.

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• When Simple and Elegant is What a Beautiful Pendant Needs
• Day 2: Prepping Wood Dominoes to Be Altered
• Day 4: Putting Together A Recycled Domino Charm Necklace
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