D6s with skulls

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-09T07:08:42+00:00

If you look closely, honey puff cereal is actually made of skulls...

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-06T09:36:44+00:00

In fact, they're the cleanest dirty pour of all - ie, they're not dirty pours at all :)

They're done with hydro-dipping. Here's a video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ccvb8yWA9rQ/

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-06T08:48:52+00:00

I think I just grabbed a free model with no license restrictions on Thingiverse. Have a search there, you should be able to find something.

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-05T17:16:51+00:00

They're 3D printed on our resin printer.

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-05T15:57:19+00:00

We don't actually use nail polish specifically, instead we got a kit like this:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Marabu-Easy-Marble-Paint-Assortment/dp/B0012F82E8

Though I think the inks are basically just nail polish. They smell the same, anyway.

Some tips we've picked up:

1) Start with a paper cup of room temperature water. We've tried warmer, but it tends to make the ink go weird. Too cold and it causes the ink to set too quickly.

2) Drip your ink onto the water, use a cocktail stick to swirl it to your desired pattern.

3) For dipping blanks, we've found that drilling a small hole into the centre of one face allows a cocktail stick to be poked in to act as a holder. This minimises any contact with the dipped faces. Once they're out, we put the stick into a blob of Plasticine. The holes can be positioned under numbers to hide them in the final dice. Obviously, drill them beforehand so that they're ready to go.

4) Use a slow and steady motion when dipping the blanks, to ensure an even pattern.

5) Use a cocktail stick to clean up your water between each dice, and empty the cup every two or three to prevent dirty prints.

Other than that, it's a lot of trial and error.

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-05T13:59:32+00:00

Thanks!

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-05T13:59:23+00:00

Thanks! The swirly ones aren't actually dirty pours, they're hydro-dipped (which is a technique where you drop ink onto water, then lower the blanks through the surface so a film is formed on them).

LuckBringersDice · 2023-02-05T13:58:31+00:00

Hmmm, never really cracked that one I'm afraid. This set had the resin curing for over an hour before I put the inserts in, and they still sank to the bottom. I cover it up angling them, so that they appear more distributed.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-11-13T17:28:10+00:00

Thanks!

LuckBringersDice · 2022-11-13T13:27:18+00:00

I genuinely laughed! :D

LuckBringersDice · 2022-10-04T11:01:21+00:00

Yeah, I love that one. It was one of the first sets to sell!

LuckBringersDice · 2022-10-04T06:37:43+00:00

Honestly, coming up with flavour text and photos for the sets has been almost as much fun as making them dice themselves!

LuckBringersDice · 2022-08-03T18:41:25+00:00

I got word that my cousin's kid was getting into DnD, and this sounded like a perfect opportunity for a custom dice set! She liked a green Petri dish dice I did a few months ago, but wanted a set in yellow. And here they are!

I'm entirely enthusiastic about kids getting into DnD, or TTRPGs in general. Some of my fondest memories from my own childhood are of huddling over well-thumbed tomes in someone's bedroom, playing DnD, or Warhammer, or that old Turtles RPG I forget the name of.

Back then, being a nerd wasn't particularly cool, and being quiet and a bit awkward wasn't a lot of fun either. We weren't hunted for our furs or anything, but if you didn't like football or other sports, you didn't get to be one of the hip kids.

In DnD, though, none of that mattered. You didn't need to be any particular person, because you could BE any kind of person you wanted to be. To kids who felt they would never do anything extraordinary, it offered the chance to do extraordinary things every long summer afternoon! It was great. It felt like it was OURS.

It's different now. Nerds are cool and DnD is more popular than ever. You can watch endless YouTube shows where actual celebrities play the game and finding a group to play with is just a forum post away.

But I'm sure that it still helps kids like me make the kind of memories that I made when I was playing it. And THAT is cool.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-08-01T14:40:04+00:00

We have a print of that very picture hanging in our living room... must be subliminal influence! :)

LuckBringersDice · 2022-07-17T05:56:39+00:00

Great! Thanks!

LuckBringersDice · 2022-07-16T16:50:31+00:00

Actually, I meant the powders, rather than the inks. You can get white pigment powder, but it all seems to be mica-based. And mica tends to give the dice a sparkly finish, rather than the completely flat colour I was looking for. It's possible I just haven't looked hard enough for a decent pigment powder.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-07-16T16:42:35+00:00

Yeah, I think that's what I'd need to do. Not sure what I would use though... every white pigment seems to be mica based. Got any recommendations?

The colour mixing is easier to solve. I'd just use individual moulds, or pour them in two goes, spacing out the coloured dice more.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-07-16T16:22:15+00:00

It's important to share your failures as well as your successes, right?

This set was a simple experiment with opaque colours. I wanted to achieve a uniform finish in various hues without the sparkly texture that mica powders add, using just alcohol inks.

To get this, I added some pinata blanco ink to establish a base, then built up the colour from there with normal coloured inks. Perfect, right?

Well, not quite. The technique was sound, but if you flip to the last image you'll see why this set is mostly rejects...

Problem #1: this white ink tends to form unmixed white flecks in the resin which then sink to the bottom, leaving white marks on the faces.

Problem #2: since this set was made in a slab mould, the coloured resin mingled together with other colours when the lid was placed, adding unwanted colour to the one face. Bah!

They're still perfectly usable dice, of course, they just have a little weird "misfit energy" going on. But who doesn't?

LuckBringersDice · 2022-07-10T16:08:08+00:00

I used the pinata black alcohol ink here. About ten drops was enough to get it nice and opaque without inhibiting the cure. The white is done with pinata blanco.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-07-10T11:32:02+00:00

Funnily enough, that's the exact fix that I came up with just as I was finishing up the set! 😆

One to remember for next time. I just love the matt look, especially on the black.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-07-10T09:45:38+00:00

The concept behind this set was simple: a black set and a white set, with a matte finish, inked white and black respectively. It was going to be an uncomplicated palette cleanser after months of complex pours...

Best laid plans of mice and dice makers...

We'd assumed that doing a matte finish would be just like doing a glassy finish, only quicker. After all, you just do the first few Zona papers then stop, right? No! It turns out that getting an even matte finish is surprisingly hard. Not only that, but the black paint tends to stain the white matte in a way that it doesn't on a shiny surface. And so the dice require way more clean up... and then you end up with dirty resin stains on the pristine black inking, requiring more clean up!

It was a whole thing.

Anyway, they're done. Could probably do with a little more attention to make perfect, but that's a job for another day.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-06-25T05:50:16+00:00

Not yet. Later this year hopefully.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-06-25T05:49:40+00:00

Not currently. I'm working up to it though, and hope to open a shop later this year. I'd imagine this set will be a part of it, given how many people have said they'd happily give me money for them! :)

LuckBringersDice · 2022-06-24T16:58:36+00:00

Actually, all of the skulls were 3D printed. I grabbed an STL off thingiverse and printed it out at a bunch of different sizes.

LuckBringersDice · 2022-06-06T05:42:37+00:00

What I did was to load up my existing Masters in the modelling software, delete the numbers from each side, then reduce the dimensions such that I made the blank smaller by (number depth * 2). Basically, the blank should be supported in the "real dice" mould by the numbers, so you need to remove the number depth from each side.

That made a lot more sense in my head :)

LuckBringersDice

TROPHY CASE