The miniature dice tower

Rolling dice on a miniature scale

A little miniature dice tower, built into the inside of a light blue travel sewing case, the inside now lined with red velvety fabric. The roller tower itself is on the upper right of the top half, made from folded clear plastic so that you can see the dice fall through it, and the upper left contains a tiny red pouch of the same fabric that contains the dice when not in use. The bottom tray has several tiny dice in it, and it's being held in the palm of my hand. A sparkly blue spell scroll for Haste his tucked inside the hinge space.

A little tiny dice tower that I made, mainly in an effort to be able to roll the dice with less fear of losing them. So, I had this miniature sewing kit from the dollar store (pic of it actually on the harrow bag page), so I pulled out the insides and lined it with still more of that red fabric (hey, they all match!)

I used some plastic with a convenient bend in it from some cookies, and folded the plastic into the shape of a dice tower, first having two rollers side-by-side (kinda cool aesthetically), followed by having a side that has room for the miniature dice bag. The outside will soon be painted, one side with our beholder Khorgah, the other with the D&D / Paizo / L5R logo mashup.

Interior finished February 2022


 
   Down
         down
                down the dice tower
                      
                     ▷     
            +-------   -+
            |           |
            |       ◁    /|
            |    .----' |
            |   /       |
            |           |
            |\          |
            | '----.    |
            |       \   |
            |           |
            |          /|
            +------   '-+
△
All the dice?

 The sewing kit, emptied out and the inside lined with red fabric. The plastic exterior is light blue for now. Inside are the seven tiny metal dice, and a five pence piece to show size. The first version of the dice tower, showing a right side and a left side, both of which can be used. The tower portion is made from clear plastic, so that you can see the ramps inside, and the red fabric behind it. Showing a mostly completed conversion of the first dice tower design with the second, where the left side has been replaced with a large opening. The completed dice roller, with a tiny red dice pouch in the left side, with the right side being a rollable tower. The closed case, as I said currently light blue in colour, and it is sitting in my hand. I will be painting this down the road, probably a d and d and paizo logo combination on the bottom, and possibly a beholder on the top.

Need the d100 magic item table right about now?

And then the painting began! We decided to do a basecoat of a nearly identical light blue to the original plastic, so that there's little difference between the paint and the unpainted lip when you open it up, with the idea of having a starburst of dark blue in the center spreading out to the outsides, on top of which we will paint a beholder, Khorgah from the AD&D page, and on the underside we will put the D&D/Paizo/L5R mashup logo. But, since that's a vertically oriented image and we don't want to put it sideways, the plan is to put four circular logos in each of the corners, the L5R Hiruma mon, the Vampire the Masquerade Gangrel logo, the Sailor Moon moon symbol, and of course a Dungeons & Dragons Sorcerer symbol for Raven. Also we're swapping the Crab clan tattoo for the HQ of HeroQuest, as we already have the Hiruma mon in the corner.

The starburst didn't really work, I'd need a far different viscosity of paint, but we turned it into more of a 'dark blue vortex' feel, and honestly, I prefer that. We started by making that, letting it dry, and then hitting it with a coat of enamel spray to protect this background while pencilling in/working on the images.

And by incredible luck, Ryman's sells carbon paper! So rather than the original plan of carefully cutting it out slightly inside the lines and tracing around it, I could just trace the beholder directly, and then WOW, did that painting of it come out really well! I am SO happy with that, it is indeed our Khorgah the Nothic Beholder. The other side finished shortly after, once again tracing the mashup logo, initially painting it but not liking the blue that I had, so I picked up a more royal blue colour for the Paizo logo, outlined it, and then repainted both, which also made the colours more solid from previously being slightly see-through in the thinner places, and which allowed me to clean up the white outline. With that complete, I added the four circular logos in the corners, selecting their locations based on which would still be recognizable being more covered in the bottom two, and painstakingly painted the thin lines needed for those. They came out incredible, and I'm especially proud of the Sailor Moon one for how immediately recognizable it is despite its size. I did leave a slight gap between those four and the main logo as a style choice, and then after a day of drying, proceeded to enamel coat it like the other side.

And then with both sides protected, we waited a week and then enamel coated it again three more times, so that it can well survive being tucked into my Harrow deck bag (though with this in its own sheer bag to avoid any of that from coming off onto the cards.

And with that, our project is at long last done!

Painting finished October 17, 2024 (with enamel coatings after)

The case hanging open over a wire, with a nearly identical to the original light blue plastic paint on it, so that there isn't a significant difference between the paint and the plastic lip when you open up the case. It has hanging open on a bend coathanger wire rack, with miscellaneous art supplies in the background. The top of the closed dice tower case, with a somewhat swirly blend from light blue edges towards a darker blue center, sitting on a paperboard surface, somewhat glossy from having a layer of enamel gloss sprayed overtop of it. A two part image, of the blue case sitting on a paperboard surface and a cut apart printout of the different zoom levels of the planned images. The top has a beholder with only about half of the initial outline painted in with a darker maroon red, and the rest of the beholder just visible in carbon paper ink. In the second image, the beholder is fully outlined, and the central eye and teeth are done in an orange yellow and lighter orange yellow respectively. The beholder fully painted on the case, with a larger zoom of it seen above and slightly smaller traced beholder with carbon paper taped behind it below. The beholder is a darker red looking somewhat to the right, with lighter red to pink highlights, the ten eye stalks twisting in different directions, with different coloured eye pupils, and if I can say so, is a very good reproduction of the original image. A glossy, freshly enameled beholder painted on the top of the blue dice tower case, smoothing out the bumps and making the painting overall look smoother and cleaner.
The mashup logo traced on, the D&D ampersand and the Paizo golem intermeshed with eachother, with the tracing paper beside, and the four miniature logos just cut out and placed in the corners around the tracing on the box, though the order of them changed for the final product. All of this is sitting on a paper towerl with a pen nearby. The initial colours painted in for the ampersand and golem, though the golem has not been outlined in white yet, with the tracing below, all sitting on a paint smeared paperboard beneath. The finished painting, with the outline now added, though somewhat messy with the outline going overtop of the other paint here and there, though I was planning to do a second coat of red and blue for the golem to brighten up the colours, and change the blue to be more of a royal blue that the Paizo golem is. The colours repainted on smoothly, with the four logos in the corners, the Hiruma castle circle in the top left, the Gangrel Vampire the Masquerade circle in the top right, the Sailor Moon logo in the bottom left, and the Dungeons and Dragons sorcerer circle in the bottom right, but without an enamel coat sprayed on yet. A very glossy picture of the back, fully painted and finished and with a very fresh layer of enamel spray overtop of it, with Kabutroid's K dot T dot signature at the bottom, laying on a paperboard surface.
A photo of a glossy, clean unfolded blue box on a wooden table, with the light reflecting off of the top right in front of the beholder, and off of its eye and eye stalks, and the bottom having light glinting off of bits of the corner logos and other places where the paint has raised the surface slightly. A nice glossy photo showing off the painting and finish.
Oohh, oohh, one more thing! So the box has this mysterious slot that almost perfectly fits the dice, but that I've just had covered with plastic to allow the dice to tumble overtop of it. But then I thought... I should put a spare set of dice inside of that slot! And so with the box this far complete, it was time to do exactly that. I used my carving tools to dig out the slot a little bit more to fit both the plastic cover, paper, and dice (we couldn't get the dice and plastic cover in at the same time otherwise), and we used a calligraphy pen to nicely write the text for the spell scroll Haste to hide the dice. I'd debated whether to leave the dice visible, but that seemed kinda boring, so it came to me that a little spell scroll could be hiding inside of there, so to speak! The first written version got messed up (you can see the text in the last of the five pics is different) because I wanted to dye the paper with tea, which blurred the ink, so we dyed paper first and then wrote the text, and then to make it a bit more magical (and blue), we dusted some Mintea and Cullinan Jeffree Star eyeshadow onto it, and clamped both the paper and plastic cover overtop of the dice. Excellent. And with THIS, the dice box is now complete :D

Spare dice slot finished November 2, 2024

ps: Also I made a small bag for it ^_^

The dice tower box sitting on a tan cloth on a wooden desk, opened up and showing the space inside the hinge of the box, which was previously just covered with a clear piece of plastic to allow the dice to roll over it after going through the tower. The dice sitting inside of the strange slot inside the hinge area of the box, just nicely and almost perfectly fitting inside. The dice inside the slot, with a paper standing up overtop of it with the words Spell Scroll: Haste written in a calligraphic text. The paper curled into shape to fit over the dice, and a little curved plastic window below inside the bottom tray to go overtop of the paper and dice. A closeup of the spell scroll paper, dusted with sparkly blue and glittery white.
The box now finished, with the glittery spell scroll hiding the dice, and the plastic cover protecting it. Three dice are sitting in the bottom tray, a d4, d12, and d20, which is showing an 18.


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