Domino Scrimshaw

I've been experimenting with the whalers' art of scrimshaw the last couple of days. Mammoth tusk and whale bone are a little tough to come by these days so I decided to test it out on a plastic domino. I got the domino set from an estate sale hoping that it was ivory (which would have been a huge find) but it turned out to be cheap plastic. I guess I was a little too hopeful.

The plastic isn't very porous so the ink has trouble sticking to the etched lines. I've heard deer antlers make a fairly good substitute, and if I wasn't worried about permanence I could always use soap. 

Still, this was a fun experiment and I hope to do more in the future. 

MOCK VOLTA

HEY!

A few weeks ago I started a Tumblr that I neglected to mention on here. It's called Mock Volta and it reimagines vintage science fiction pulp novel covers as fake Mars Volta albums. In general I make up some ridiculously over complicated title to go along with it, but sometimes the titles of the books are so good that I just use them as they are; a testament to the fantastic pairing.

Although the title of the blog is "Mock Volta" I mock them only in jest and am actually a big fan of their music. Here is one of the fake covers from the tumblr followed by one of their actual album covers.

I also make sure to credit the original artist of the novel covers and link to websites when I can. So if ANY of that interests you, CHECK IT OUT.

Thanks.