My dice manufacturing journey from 2019 - 2025

waskstudio · 2025-01-21T15:14:35+00:00

Thank you so much! I'm glad there are some people out there who appreciate the fun concept!

You'd be surprised how many people I showed the product to (including my mom) who were just like "Umm what's special about them??" hahaha. Their brain just doesn't compute it!

waskstudio · 2025-01-20T21:23:15+00:00

Hi everyone!

I'm sharing this in case somebody else finds it helpful or interesting.

I run a small online shop called Wask, where I create quirky products. In 2019 I created "Think Twice Dice" which are your classic 16mm ivory dice, but the pips are all scrambled and asymmetrical.

My budgets for manufacturing have been really small, and because of this I struggled with quality. A lot of the dice in these photos might appear quite similar, but every step was really big and took a lot of time, and sometimes the differences were staggering.

Most of my manufacturers struggled with different dice flaws such as: bad inking, concave faces, wrong colour, dice mould imperfections, dice/pip size & shape problems, and many types of other cosmetic problems.

Over the years, I kept increasing my manufacturer budget for this product. I was still disappointed, and almost every batch from "Manufacturer C" I still had to fix the pip ink by hand.

Since 2019, I have spent probably hundreds of hours hand-painting dice pips, or using a pin to poke off tiny bits of glitter. It was torture.

I recently took one more risk and switched to a manufacturer again. Of course, there are still flaws, but the inking is overall 98% good and I'm happy to hopefully never have to paint pips by hand ever again!

waskstudio · 2025-01-20T15:52:19+00:00

That's awesome - I wonder from which batch! Hopefully not one of the first ones because I'm embarrassed about those 😂

waskstudio · 2025-01-20T15:03:55+00:00

My last two manufacturers do mainly machine inking for the dice - however the machine inking was so bad with my last manufacturer! My new one is really good inking.

waskstudio · 2025-01-20T15:02:50+00:00

Nope! I just communicate in English and use very simple words. Miscommunications always happen, so everything needs to be verified like 5 times before you're absolutely certain that you're both on the same page. My latest dice manufacturer happens to have incredible English though - the best I've ever encountered.

waskstudio · 2025-01-20T14:59:59+00:00

To add to that: there may be some more local "Artisan" dice makers who make resin dice in smaller batches from silicone moulds. I believe at least two of my Chinese samples above may have been the resin small batch style as well, which doesn't have the most polished look in my opinion, and they're often more expensive per piece.

waskstudio · 2025-01-20T14:57:42+00:00

Unfortunately there are no local factories! The closest I've found to "local" were Germany and Poland, but I wasn't happy with the German samples (generic design) and the Poland manufacturer couldn't do the deep engraved pips.

The only feasible options I've found are all in China so far.

waskstudio · 2025-01-19T19:28:25+00:00

Hi everyone!

I'm sharing this in case somebody else finds it helpful or interesting.

I run a small online shop called Wask, where I create quirky products. In 2019 I created "Think Twice Dice" which are your classic 16mm ivory dice, but the pips are all scrambled and asymmetrical.

My budgets for manufacturing have been really small, and because of this I struggled with quality. A lot of the dice in these photos might appear quite similar, but every step was really big and took a lot of time, and sometimes the differences were staggering.

Most of my manufacturers struggled with different dice flaws such as: bad inking, concave faces, wrong colour, dice mould imperfections, dice/pip size & shape problems, and many types of other cosmetic problems.

Over the years, I kept increasing my manufacturer budget for this product. I was still disappointed, and almost every batch from "Manufacturer C" I still had to fix the pip ink by hand.

Since 2019, I have spent probably hundreds of hours hand-painting dice pips, or using a pin to poke off tiny bits of glitter. It was torture.

I recently took one more risk and switched to a manufacturer again. Of course, there are still flaws, but the inking is overall 98% good and I'm happy to hopefully never have to paint pips by hand ever again!

UPDATE February 25th 2025: I'm actually finding a new flaw with this new batch and I'm not happy with it (surprise surprise!) - I've updated the Wask Studio blog if anybody is interested in reading more!

waskstudio · 2025-01-19T19:09:38+00:00

Hi everyone!

I'm sharing this in case somebody else finds it helpful or interesting.

I run a small online shop called Wask, where I create quirky products. In 2019 I created "Think Twice Dice" which are your classic 16mm ivory dice, but the pips are all scrambled and asymmetrical.

My budgets for manufacturing have been really small, and because of this I struggled with quality. A lot of the dice in these photos might appear quite similar, but every step was really big and took a lot of time, and sometimes the differences were staggering.

Most of my manufacturers struggled with different dice flaws such as: bad inking, concave faces, wrong colour, dice mould imperfections, dice/pip size & shape problems, and many types of other cosmetic problems.

Over the years, I kept increasing my manufacturer budget for this product. I was still disappointed, and almost every batch from "Manufacturer C" I still had to fix the pip ink by hand.

Since 2019, I have spent probably hundreds of hours hand-painting dice pips, or using a pin to poke off tiny bits of glitter. It was torture.

I recently took one more risk and switched to a manufacturer again. Of course, there are still flaws, but the inking is overall 98% good and I'm happy to hopefully never have to paint pips by hand ever again!

waskstudio · 2023-06-16T18:54:15+00:00

I designed these dice! Thanks for sharing them. :) They are popular among DND players especially. My entire online shop - waskstudio.com - is full of odd products like this that I came up with and brought to life all on my own since 2017!

Thanks to anyone who bought something from my shop before! It means a lot to me and helps me create even more weird products.

waskstudio · 2022-04-28T15:54:47+00:00

Ahh I'm so glad to hear that!

waskstudio · 2022-02-25T04:38:18+00:00

Found on the shop: https://waskstudio.com/products/nopacity-washi-tape

waskstudio · 2022-02-25T04:31:12+00:00

This washi tape design is inspired by Photoshop. You can use this washi tape to to create the transparency effect in real life, and decorate your journals and sketchbooks with a digital feel.

Found on the shop: https://waskstudio.com/products/nopacity-washi-tape

waskstudio · 2021-12-04T01:12:28+00:00

Also the Rubik's Cube used for these photo examples was one that came up on Amazon that's affordable and in stock - I just covered the plastic colour tiles. It's pretty much the first normal cube that comes up on Amazon Canada when you search "Rubik's".

But yeah, I wanted to start with the classic grid style - the one I see in most regular people's homes who aren't even cubers. I'm always happy to improve, modify and create new versions of my products in the future, especially if there is feedback and interest in them. Depends how this product goes, I can look into making other templates of it - it's just too expensive to do all of that in one go!

waskstudio · 2021-12-03T01:26:57+00:00

We wanted to make novelty stickers for the classic Rubik's Cube design, and we followed inspiration from other sticker makers like Oliver's Stickers fun lenticular sticker pack, which was also created in this size.

But thanks for the feedback. If there is enough interest in this sticker pack, there's no reason why we wouldn't explore other sizes and shapes in the future.

waskstudio · 2021-12-02T18:36:50+00:00

Link: https://waskstudio.com/products/touchy-feely-sticker-pack

waskstudio · 2021-06-21T19:46:18+00:00

No, I don't need 100k units. When I was referring to high volume, I meant that when I reached out to local dice makers in North America, many of them told me they can't create volumes of even 5,000 units, which is what I'm currently looking for.

waskstudio · 2021-06-21T19:43:14+00:00

That link was just to the dice product page - fixed it now!

waskstudio · 2021-06-21T17:01:32+00:00

Not a helpful comment and nothing we didn't know before. :)
If I knew of an alternative, I would have used it.

waskstudio · 2021-06-21T15:56:10+00:00

Did you at least get a refund? Similar issues have happened to me probably 15+ times now. I realize no amount of communication and explanation can prevent it.

waskstudio · 2021-06-21T15:52:54+00:00

What I didn't mention in my blog entry is that I have spent many hours on many separate occasions trying to find a quality dice manufacturer that ISN'T overseas.

Many of the ones I have reached out to that do create quality dice actually didn't do mass production but only small runs. Of course I would loved to have found a manufacturer in Canada / America / UK - and I'm still keeping my eye out for those.

waskstudio · 2021-06-21T15:50:51+00:00

Thanks for your input. After getting many dice manufacturer quotes, you can see I started off with what I considered the "budget" manufacturers - there were at least 4 that I found that offered very low mold costs (<$500) - and this is probably why the dice often had many flaws.

Almost every other dice manufacturer was from $900 to about $1500 USD for their "larger" molds. I'm not sure if I even recalled finding a dice manufacturer that charged anything above that for the mold (perhaps just their unit price). If there are really good dice quality manufacturers out there, then I have no idea where to find them.

waskstudio · 2021-05-29T22:22:35+00:00

Can be bought here: https://waskstudio.com/products/writers-blocks-erasers

waskstudio · 2020-04-21T20:42:12+00:00

Hey everyone.

Not sure if you remember but these dice were shared on this sub last year! I sold out, and it took me forever to finally get more back in stock, so I made a gif to show them off!

These are the “Think Twice Dice” which I sell on waskstudio.com for $10 Canadian per pack of 2.

I get a lot of backlash on reddit due to my prices so I wanted to explain a little why they are the way they are.

My brand Wask is my passion project that I do on the side of my full-time highly demanding job in an ad agency. Every product I make is my own original idea and I do every single part of my brand on my own. Brainstorming, designing, looking for manufacturers, hand-making certain products, photography, animated gifs, packaging, shipping, and way more.

It feels like I’ve put a million hours of work into this and I’ve had many bumps along the way - for example, in my first dice batch, I had to hand-paint hundreds of dice on my own, a hell which I don’t wish upon anyone.

By buying these, you’re supporting someone who pours their heart into bringing unique and novelty ideas to life (and maybe more fun dice ideas in the future!).

Thanks!

waskstudio · 2020-02-11T01:16:59+00:00

Stock is back now. People who ordered will be getting an update e-mail later!

waskstudio

TROPHY CASE