Given the board game collection I have in my cupboards, I’ve already collected or been gifted a few sets of dice. Occult eyeball ones, a set that reminds me of an early Psychdelic Porn Crumpets album cover, even some stone ones from a mates trip to Croatia. But still as a crafty type, I’ve always been curious about making my own, and for Christmas K actually got us both a session at a dice-making workshop.
It was interesting to partake in the process and see how many different ways there are to customise a dice. The class took place over two sessions a week apart, with the first being all about designing and assembling the dice, choosing mica powders, inks, liquid capsules, etc. Ending with pouring the resin and placing it into a vacuum chamber.
The second session was, much like my experience with woodworking, 90% sanding. Legitimately hours as we ran through several grit levels of wet-sanding on the faces that were at or near the top of the mould, and were either risen or had sharper edges than the rest. The whole workshop ended with painting in the little numbers, which was honestly much easier than my shaky hands were expecting.
I’m grateful to have done this and it was a fun experience, but I did come away thinking “I reckon I’m good on resin’. I prefer working with more natural materials (I already feel weird enough about using the polymer clay), and all the resin stuff just kinda had that stink that 3D Printing market products do, and I’m not really a big fan of that.
Anyway, later I decided to make a light-box out of some scrap I had lying around and two book-lights I received for Christmas that I wasn’t really in need of. Enjoy my little photo shoot! It’s not perfect, especially the colour consistency as it’s been a long time since I worked with RAW files, but I think they’re cute!
My Tasty Design
I decided to go for a top-deck chocolate design after being inspired by another design which I saw online. It may not have turned out exactly how I wanted due to not having any say over the mould (such as softer edges or less-sharp numbers, and don’t you dare suggest I start sanding again I refuse I’m tired leave me alone) but I still think they’re really cute.
I originally wanted to do some of the numbering in different colours to imply different flavours, such as peppermint green or Turkish delight pink. However these paints in question operated differently and would’ve required a lot of layering, and this session already went for 3.5 hours without that additional work.
One choice I thought was interesting, was I asked to do a liquid core in the D20, especially because the rest of my set seemed a bit too simple. I wanted to do a ‘caramel core’ in the middle, and have a transparent top as if a bite had been taken and you could see the inside.
You can see by the picture that the effect may not be super convincing, but in person the liquid core looks really fun, especially as the mica powder within swirls with waves of caramel once it finishes rolling.
I also quite like the D4, as it was the easiest dice to have the chocolate layers point towards a certain number. I also made the D10 plain chocolate while the D100 is top deck, to help distinguish one from the other. I preferably would’ve done one entirely chocolate, one entirely white, but I ran out of resin.
Thanks for reading!
This was a fun workshop to crack through, and while I don’t think I’ll be playing with resin again, I am grateful for the opportunity. Let me know if you’ve made any dice before, I would be curious to see what designs any of you have made before!
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