Tag: Crafting

Crafting a Dragon

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Crafting a Dragon Dice Holder

For a while I have been making cute little Dice Holder Beholders. They were a hit at on Etsy and at conventions where I have vended. They have been fun to make and I have enjoyed making everyone of of them.Since my blog talking about about the cute dice holders, I have begun calling them Dice Buddies. Additionally, I send them with a little adoption certificates and name tags. A big thank you to one of my customers for this idea. Since I started making the dice beholders I now feel that I am ready for crafting something more complex. Something like a cute cuddly awesome dragon dice holder companion! Trust me, if you take a walk through the internet you will find there are a ton of these magnificent creations out there. I am going to join the ranks of my fellow creators bringing them to life as also.

Dragon Dice Holder Research

With the day of the convention rapidly approaching. I decided it is the perfect time to try my hand at making one of these adorable, fun, and intimidating creations. Let’s talk about the way it came together! The fist steps was to build out body shape. After taking some time and looking carefully at the steps of crafting Sculpey Dragon figures. I realized I would need to watch a few Sculpey tutorials. After viewing several I rapidly became less intimidated by the process.

The Build

I used some tinfoil to build a skeleton to wrap my Sculpey around. The reason for this:

  • Keeps the Sculpey thickness consistent for baking times.
  • Provides you with considerably more product to work with.
  • It provides strength to your craft.

After rolling the first bit of Sculpey out and applying it to the skeleton this is the result was a nice Nessie looking body. The rest came together in short order. I surprised myself that the more that I began to work on my Dragon it began to understand how simple its complexity actually was. The things that were intimidating became easier and less stressful to work on as time past. When you look at the finished dragon figures they have much detail to take in. Because of this they look more complex then they are. In reality the Dragons are simply a collection of cones and cylinders. With a few additional pieces added for extra flare.

The Result

Pictured is the finished version of my first Dragon Dice Holder. Overall for the first one that I did I am very proud of the results. As the person that has crafted it I see several errors and mistakes that I need to work on. In future dragons, but I am confident that I will nail them as time goes by. With each one I will get better. Have you seen any other fun looking Sculpey dice holders that you think would be fun to try? Feel free to let me know, I have discovered I enjoy making these things. If you would like one of these creations check out my Etsy store!

Foster Leathercraft Leather Wallet Game Screen

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The Idea

A while back I had an inspiration for a portable magnetic game screen to use for tabletop gaming. Since this idea was more for a game master on the go than a home-based gamer. What I would need was as a screen for keeping a few notes and to roll dice behind nothing more. But I still wanted it to be as functional as possible while looking great on the table.

Bringing the Game Screen To Life

I turned to Foster Leathercraft for the assist in bringing my idea to reality. The Result was this beautify crafted Leather wallet style game screen with magnetic backing and index card Inserts. I honestly could not be more impressed with the finished product. It was an absolute treat watching its development take place. Over the course of a few months, Foster Leathercraft and I discussed the progress and hurdles of the game screens creation. The idea was simple enough, economically bringing it to life would prove to be more difficult than expected. We soon learned to cut and insert the sturdy panels for the game screen proved to be the most complicated portion of the design. Cutting the steel inserts to size proved both quiet time consuming and costly. After many broken blades, Foster devised a process to affordably cut the steel inserts. Once this was overcome he had a prototype crafted in short order.

Finished Product

The game screen itself is nothing short of a work of art. The craftsmanship is top-notch. Its appearance will only get better with use as the leather ages. Taking on the character of the sessions, months and years of gaming it will see. The artwork is in the style of the first edition of D&D core books. This also complements the art on the Dice Cups that he crafts as well. This will make a nice looking set at the table of any game session. The screen itself measures just over 16 inches long and shy of 5 inches high. Making it large for some pockets but in reality, is only slightly bigger than my iPhone plus when folded. Thus making it perfect for travel for me. I use a couple of disk magnets to keep it game screen securely closed when not in use. It turned out looking amazing but a bit smaller than my first plan. I had originally wanted the screen sized for 4×6 inch index cards. But with the finished wallet in hand, I now think that it would have been too large.

At The Table

When it comes to gameplay, space is not at a premium by design. That said, with the use of flat disk rare earth magnets that I keep my wallet game screen closed. I can place twenty, three by five index cards in the wallet and still securely close it without issue.

How Will I Use It?

I break my sessions into three Acts. Each act has a number of index cards with notes for how things will play out in the game. I keep things sorted by placing each of these Acts in their respective panel from left to right in the game wallet. With this method between my notes and my phone or my iPad, I can run anything I need during the game.

I also discovered that with the magnets. I also have the ability to snap my Paizo face cards to the game screen for added depth of role play. Allowing my players to add faces to the NPC’s they meet. This is a huge benefit when traveling. In a convention setting your players will need all the help, they can get to remember who they encounter. I am looking forward to this year’s upcoming MACE convention to show this awesome wallet game screen off to my friends and fellow gamers. If you think this is as nice a portable screen as I do and you would like one of your own. Give a shout out to my friend Fosters Leathercraft and let him know that this is a must-have for you as well!

Mace “Chopped” Terrain Contest

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This year at Mace I competed in the “Chopped” terrain contest. This was the second terrain contest that the convention has held in as many years. In 2017 the contest was a build it and bring event. DM Scotty was the Judge, and it was a fun event that they decided to grow. In 2018 they decided to change it up and introduced the “Chopped” contest theme. Myself I hope that they continue to run this in the coming years. This year the competition had a chance to bring home a 3D printer for winning first place. 

For us, the “Chopped” contest was going to be a special challenge. I decided that it would be a great way to still do something other than vending while at the con. Better yet it would also be something that Missy and I could do together since she had not signed up to play any games this year as well. 

The Chopped Contest Details

The contest was a blind box 22-hour timed event. With only a single rule, you must use most of what was in the given “mystery” box. The boxes were passed out at 8pm on Friday, and the event ended at 7pm Saturday. I will be the first person to tell you that this ensured everyone that competed was pressed for time. I will say that the vast number of us that were in the competition were lucky to manage to put a solid 6-8 hours in on the projects. 

The box that we received contained a ton of raw materials. That proved to be the first challenge as we needed to sort through everything and decide what we were going to build from it. The second challenge that we faced was that we had entered into a terrain building contest and had never built a single piece of terrain EVER! 

Regrettably, we were so overwhelmed with the contents of the box no one thought to take a picture of what all was it. On the 10th floor, there was a paint area and some items like proxxon cutters provided. But what follows is a little list to give you an idea. 

  • 1 Roll of toilet paper
  • 2 solid cardstock tubes 
  • 1 Foam core board
  • styrofoam
  • pink insulation foam
  • polymer clay
  • several sizes of popsicle sticks
  • string
  • bendy straws 
  • Aluminum foil 
  • 1 Tea Light
  • A plastic skull 
  • some random plastic items 
  • Army painter tufts of grass & flock. 
  • A sheet of cardboard 
  • 1 Glue Gun with Glue sticks
  • Utility knife
  • a few clay tools
  • several types of glue 

The Resut

After some thought, we dove in and I was determined to want to build terrain that served more than one purpose. We settled on a working dice tower that would roll into a dice tray. The tower would look like a creepy lighthouse type tower. The dice would then roll into what was intended to look like a sewer well with pipes and bodies inside. 

We pulled it off, with some effort a little bit of burnt flesh and a whole lot of panic that we would not ever finish it in time we got the whole thing together painted and turned in. Better yet for our first piece of terrain that we built during a timed competition, we even pulled off a working dice tower! 

Much of the material we had an easy time working with. The only exception was that GOD DAMN pink foam.. It is an hateful unforgiving medium to first time crafters in my opinion. Mind you we were working with it at a 4 foot table behind a vendor booth so my feelings about it might be a bit jaded. 

Honestly, were pretty proud of the ugly beast but it did not place. That’s alright though we finished and we had fun doing it! And not only did we use most of the items listed above but we even cut the box up and used it as well! 

We were only given green brown and grey for colors, and honestly, we were so far behind at the time we got to the paint stage we just were hoping to get full coverage on the blasted thing lol. Maybe we will make some more terrain between now and next MACE and we will see how we do next year. 

If you would like to see a craft that we were able to take our time on. Use the following link and enjoy!

 https://runkleplaysgames.com/2018/08/09/crafting-thursday-making-d12-containers/

RPG PATREON LINK

Crafting Thursday, Making D12 Containers

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Well, today was day 8 of #RPGaDay but I was not really a fan of the question. So instead of picking an alternative question, I decided it was going to be a craft day for me. About two weeks ago I picked up found these vases pictured below in the store. I have been itching to turn these tabletop geometric vases into D12 containers. So I picked up a pad of numbered stickers and set about putting the numbers on each of them.

I chose to make the numbers look as authentic as a D12 dice would look on the table. In the end, the dice lover in me won and I did indeed set myself to put the right number on each side facing properly. It just looks RIGHT this way.

I know at this stage it looks like they only remember D12s in shape. When the stickers were finally on it did begin to feel like I just might pull this off. I picked out a  few colors and gave each of them a few layers of each coat and left them out to dry. Once they were dry I sat down with an X-acto knife and one by one removed the stickers. Once they were all cleaned up I gave them each a couple of layers of gloss coat so they would look nice.

 

The Results D12’s!

  

 

 

I am pretty happy with the end result! I have one more dice to do in the next few days I just ran out of stickers for my templates.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed this short easy craft. It was fun and the most time-consuming part was getting the numbers lined up.
Until next time!

 

Here are some links to other crafts I have done in the past.

 

Tabletop Crafting Project: Laser Puzzle

 

They look suspiciously like Rocks…

 

Product Spotlight: HG3D – Cellar Door – Raghaven Collection

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Continuing the spotlight feature some cool and simple 3d Prints that are out there to be found today I picked Hobgoblin 3D Cellar Door. Hobgoblin-3D  has a huge collection of 3D prints that you can pick up at DTRPG. I like the cellar door as it is a simple print and surprisingly out of the many entrances that I have in my collection of doors. This happens to be one that I have never seen.

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Publisher: Hobgoblin-3D
Price: $2.99
Link: DTRPG 3D Print Cellar Door

Hobgoblin-3D is proud to present to you the Cellar Door from the Raghaven Hamlet Collection. This 3D Printed terrain piece has been digitally sculpted, scaled to fit 28mm systems and optimized for Home Use 3D Printing.

One of our core focuses is to provide an affordable entry level into 3D Miniatures and Terrain. Meaning after a one time purchase, the product will be yours to download and print out as many times as your printer can handle. As a result, saving you both time and money

Inside the pack, you will find an.STL file, our product T&Cs, and an in-depth instruction manual. Providing you with print settings, recommended materials and a construction guide (if applicable) below.

 

Rocket Pig Games Barbarian

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This is a line of minis that have caught my eye, I picked this guy up today and I plan on printing him up later today. I will come back and show later and pop a sample print in the info here as well.

Publisher: Rocket Pig Games Inc.
File: One STL File 3d Printed Barbarian
Link: Rocket Pig Games Barbarian

Rocket Pig Games is a leader in the 3D industry. We specialize in creating 3D printable files that work on your home or public 3D printer. If you are looking for unique and flawless 3D printable files to create miniatures, modular terrain, and props then look no further! We have yearly Kickstarters! Follow our progress on our website or on Facebook.

This model does not come with supports. You will need to generate them with the software of your choice or use Autodesk Meshmixer which is free.

SCiBuHD

 

These are the settings we have used to get perfect prints on our printers. Printers vary as do different types of filaments and how prints behave in different types of weather! You will need to get comfortable with your printer and how it prints in the hot, cold, and humidity. Regardless of the printer you choose, I recommend keeping your room cool and dry. I also, highly recommend using Hatchbox PLA. It may cost a bit more but it’s 100% worth it. Seriously.

Here’s what is working really well with Hatchbox PLA:

TEMP: 195 (40-55 for bed depending on season)

SPEED: 60 mms

RETRACTION DISTANCE: 0.80

RETRACTION SOPEED: 30

INFILL: 15% (for tiles)

TOP SOLID LAYERS: 7

BOTTOM SOLID LAYERS: 4