ShopDreamUp AI ArtDreamUp
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Description
Most of the time, I am what I like to call a 'casual geek'. Geeky enough to like table top games, fantasy, and WoW. But not necessarily geeky enough that I'm super passionate about it. But every once in a while, I get a creative bug of an idea and I just go nuts with it. This is one of those moments.
My husband and I are big fans of a board game called 'Red Dragon Inn', and we have collected everything of the game currently available. This includes 4 full stand-alone games and 6 individual characters, as well as the Gambling games card deck. There is so much game material that we couldn't condense it down into one box without just throwing everything in there in a messy heap. So the tokens were all stored in a plastic organizer, while the cards and mats and stuff were in the box. All together, it was not a terribly attractive system. The character decks were easy to mix up. It was easy to forget the token case when grabbing the box, so we'd end up out in the middle of the woods camping and not being able to play cuz we were missing half the content.
So finally, one day, I decided that I was going to build a game box to hold all of the stuff. That way it'd be in one place and all nice and tidy and it'd be great. And, as most of these ideas start out, it was just going to be a simple thing. A wooden box with divided rows where everything sat and that was it.
But once I got started... I just couldn't help myself! The box had to have the name on it, and the craft store had these great curly letters. But because they were so big they could only fit on the lid. But I wanted something on the front of the box, so you'd know what the game was. So I tracked down another artist who works with wood and laser cutting and she helped me design this awesome engraved cut-out of the distinctive Red Dragon Inn dragon.
The box itself was a premade thing I bought from a craft store. I am not a wood worker and I will shamelessly use as much already-available materials as I can get. It's a nice box though. Biggest one I could find that wasn't a pirate treasure chest. It was a little too big though for what I was originally planning. After all, it was just holding cards, and cards aren't 6in tall. Then my hubby made the suggestion that I put shot glasses in the box. Since this is a game based on taverns where adventurers would gather to drink, fight and gamble, its fun to break out some beers and take shots while you play. At first, I thought the idea ridiculous. I wasn't going to have room for things like that. But then the idea sat there and stewed for a while.... and became brilliant. I had to do it.
Of course, just putting the random assortment of shot glasses from our cupboard in there wasn't going to work. It had to be in the proper theme with the rest of the game. So I went hunting, and came across a company called Mug Mule. They make mugs and shot glasses from hammered copper and stainless steel. Soon as I saw those little guys I thought "I. Must. Have. These."
The idea for the gold chest resulted as a desire to have some sort of container for the coins. I happened to find this good lookin' box at the craft store and it was the perfect size to hold all my coins. The rough and scratched surface was also a detail I sawed into the wood, as I figured an old wooden tavern chest used to hold funds would probably not be in the best of shape. I'm really hoping one day to replace the cardboard coins with actual metal coins to make this even more awesome and authentic.
And all of those interior compartments, the card tray, the lid slats... I designed and cut by hand. Literally... I sat on my living room couch with a little hack saw, sawing away at craft wood. XD Oh.... my tendinitis has not been pleased with me. haha Thankfully, the craft stores have a lot of craft wood in various sizes, so most of the time I only needed to cut them to length. Again, I am not a wood worker, and there's only so much you can do with a hack saw. The only thing that gave me a real hard time was finding 2in wood strips. Seriously.... HOW DOES NOBODY CARRY 2IN WOOD STRIPS???!!! This was a re-occuring frustration for me, because there were tons of other crazy sizes like... .75in. 1.5in. 2.5in. 3in. 5in. 2.81in. 2.67in. But not 1in or 2in. WTF. Not even the local department store carried 2in. I happened to get lucky and found 2 strips in a stand selling assorted balsa wood.
As I cut and sanded pieces out, I would take time to stain them before assembling. This is important, as stain will not adhere and color glue residue, and I was absolutely not going to have blotchy, pale patches of wood around my edges because of glue. I have around 5-6 different wood stains I used to make this. The outside I wanted to be warm shades of gold and brown, while the interior parts I wanted to be red. If you ever want to put color gradients in wood using stains, paint the whole thing with the lightest color first, then start painting over that with subsequent darker colors. I found that having that base stain prevents other stains from instantly setting in so you can buff a smooth gradient without getting 'tan lines'. This is also the same technique I used to stain the dragon (a BIG thanks to Wendy, the wood artist, who suggested I use maple instead birch. Hard smooth woods hold shallow engravings a lot better, so when you color you don't completely lose all your detail).
If anyone knows of good websites where I can order good quality and detailed wood cut-outs in fantasy and medieval themes, I'd love to know about it. Because I found that trying to find any sort of decent wood-cut designs online was next to impossible. I had hoped to find a little wooden beer mug cut-out to decorate the lid, but couldn't find anything I liked. Though I have found that I am apparently not too shabby with an exacto knife when it comes to carving!
All in all, this was a project that has spanned about 2months, and ended up being 10x fancier then what my original idea was. I have managed to completely fail at making a simple game box... but came up with something incredibly awesome instead.
I wasn't able to fit EVERYTHING in the box. But there's enough materials in there for 10 people to play. There's a copy of the newest rule book, the optional Sea Deck rules, the gambling cards game book, and all of the rules for characters who have special play styles. There are 22 character decks in the card tray, with space to add 5-6 more, at which point I can start storing things down with the shot glasses to make more room. The Sea Deck, Drink Deck, and Gambling Cards are stored next to the gold chest. The center compartments on the card tray hold the health and alcohol marble tokens as well as all the character tokens.
And, because I'm a super ridiculous nerd, after I got this all done, I had the sudden bright idea that I wanted to make themed drinks to go with the game. After all, its fun when you and your friends can sit around swigging beer... but it'd be even MORE fun if you were swigging themed drinks!
Of course, there's too many different things in the game for me to make a unique drink for every single one. So what I did was break everything down into their major groups, then I came up with drinks that could be made with or without alcohol, so you could have fun no matter what your preference. And since I was going the extra mile to do this, it only made sense to get fancy bottles to match (and a basket to hold them all in)!
Here's the general idea I went with when assembling my drinks:
Note: everything is designed to be mixed with rum. Which it did, rather tastily I might add.
For Ale/Rum - Butterbeer (I found good recipes online and actually made this)
For Wines/Elven Wines - Berry Juice (like currant juice, or a mixed berry)
For Swills/Rotguts/Brews - Veggie Fruit Juice
(mix of Naked Juice Green Machine, Carrot/Mango Juice, Coconut Juice. Dash of cayenne pepper for bite. Tastes good, looks NASTY. Add a gummy eyeball or worm for added gross effect)
For Fancy, Sparkly Drinks (Wizards, Pixie, Gnomish, Ambrosia, etc...) - Sparkling Sweet and Tangy Fruit Juice
(this is still a work in progress, but I the basics were sparkling coconut water, guava juice, lime juice, honey)
For Robust Fancy Drinks (Dwarven, Dragonfire, Captains Beer, etc...) - Spiced Birchbeer
(still a work in progress, but the basics were birchbeer w/ maple extract and spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, blackened seasoning and seasoning salt)
Water and Coffee were pretty simple. Just provide either in whatever form you want.
Whew! Talk about a wall of text! But I hope you all like the results of my project here!
And now... time for credits!
Thank you....
Slugfest Games, for making such a cool board game and allowing me use your dragon image: slugfestgames.com/games/rdi/
Wendy, for helping me create the dragon cut-out: www.etsy.com/shop/WoodNotions?…
Mug Mule, for having awesome copper shot glasses: www.mugmule.com/
----
Check out some of the other places where you can find me online!
Facebook
www.facebook.com/pages/The-Iro…
Blog
ironphoenixmetal.blogspot.com/
If you'd like to purchase any of my work
www.etsy.com/shop/TheIronPhoen…
My husband and I are big fans of a board game called 'Red Dragon Inn', and we have collected everything of the game currently available. This includes 4 full stand-alone games and 6 individual characters, as well as the Gambling games card deck. There is so much game material that we couldn't condense it down into one box without just throwing everything in there in a messy heap. So the tokens were all stored in a plastic organizer, while the cards and mats and stuff were in the box. All together, it was not a terribly attractive system. The character decks were easy to mix up. It was easy to forget the token case when grabbing the box, so we'd end up out in the middle of the woods camping and not being able to play cuz we were missing half the content.
So finally, one day, I decided that I was going to build a game box to hold all of the stuff. That way it'd be in one place and all nice and tidy and it'd be great. And, as most of these ideas start out, it was just going to be a simple thing. A wooden box with divided rows where everything sat and that was it.
But once I got started... I just couldn't help myself! The box had to have the name on it, and the craft store had these great curly letters. But because they were so big they could only fit on the lid. But I wanted something on the front of the box, so you'd know what the game was. So I tracked down another artist who works with wood and laser cutting and she helped me design this awesome engraved cut-out of the distinctive Red Dragon Inn dragon.
The box itself was a premade thing I bought from a craft store. I am not a wood worker and I will shamelessly use as much already-available materials as I can get. It's a nice box though. Biggest one I could find that wasn't a pirate treasure chest. It was a little too big though for what I was originally planning. After all, it was just holding cards, and cards aren't 6in tall. Then my hubby made the suggestion that I put shot glasses in the box. Since this is a game based on taverns where adventurers would gather to drink, fight and gamble, its fun to break out some beers and take shots while you play. At first, I thought the idea ridiculous. I wasn't going to have room for things like that. But then the idea sat there and stewed for a while.... and became brilliant. I had to do it.
Of course, just putting the random assortment of shot glasses from our cupboard in there wasn't going to work. It had to be in the proper theme with the rest of the game. So I went hunting, and came across a company called Mug Mule. They make mugs and shot glasses from hammered copper and stainless steel. Soon as I saw those little guys I thought "I. Must. Have. These."
The idea for the gold chest resulted as a desire to have some sort of container for the coins. I happened to find this good lookin' box at the craft store and it was the perfect size to hold all my coins. The rough and scratched surface was also a detail I sawed into the wood, as I figured an old wooden tavern chest used to hold funds would probably not be in the best of shape. I'm really hoping one day to replace the cardboard coins with actual metal coins to make this even more awesome and authentic.
And all of those interior compartments, the card tray, the lid slats... I designed and cut by hand. Literally... I sat on my living room couch with a little hack saw, sawing away at craft wood. XD Oh.... my tendinitis has not been pleased with me. haha Thankfully, the craft stores have a lot of craft wood in various sizes, so most of the time I only needed to cut them to length. Again, I am not a wood worker, and there's only so much you can do with a hack saw. The only thing that gave me a real hard time was finding 2in wood strips. Seriously.... HOW DOES NOBODY CARRY 2IN WOOD STRIPS???!!! This was a re-occuring frustration for me, because there were tons of other crazy sizes like... .75in. 1.5in. 2.5in. 3in. 5in. 2.81in. 2.67in. But not 1in or 2in. WTF. Not even the local department store carried 2in. I happened to get lucky and found 2 strips in a stand selling assorted balsa wood.
As I cut and sanded pieces out, I would take time to stain them before assembling. This is important, as stain will not adhere and color glue residue, and I was absolutely not going to have blotchy, pale patches of wood around my edges because of glue. I have around 5-6 different wood stains I used to make this. The outside I wanted to be warm shades of gold and brown, while the interior parts I wanted to be red. If you ever want to put color gradients in wood using stains, paint the whole thing with the lightest color first, then start painting over that with subsequent darker colors. I found that having that base stain prevents other stains from instantly setting in so you can buff a smooth gradient without getting 'tan lines'. This is also the same technique I used to stain the dragon (a BIG thanks to Wendy, the wood artist, who suggested I use maple instead birch. Hard smooth woods hold shallow engravings a lot better, so when you color you don't completely lose all your detail).
If anyone knows of good websites where I can order good quality and detailed wood cut-outs in fantasy and medieval themes, I'd love to know about it. Because I found that trying to find any sort of decent wood-cut designs online was next to impossible. I had hoped to find a little wooden beer mug cut-out to decorate the lid, but couldn't find anything I liked. Though I have found that I am apparently not too shabby with an exacto knife when it comes to carving!
All in all, this was a project that has spanned about 2months, and ended up being 10x fancier then what my original idea was. I have managed to completely fail at making a simple game box... but came up with something incredibly awesome instead.
I wasn't able to fit EVERYTHING in the box. But there's enough materials in there for 10 people to play. There's a copy of the newest rule book, the optional Sea Deck rules, the gambling cards game book, and all of the rules for characters who have special play styles. There are 22 character decks in the card tray, with space to add 5-6 more, at which point I can start storing things down with the shot glasses to make more room. The Sea Deck, Drink Deck, and Gambling Cards are stored next to the gold chest. The center compartments on the card tray hold the health and alcohol marble tokens as well as all the character tokens.
And, because I'm a super ridiculous nerd, after I got this all done, I had the sudden bright idea that I wanted to make themed drinks to go with the game. After all, its fun when you and your friends can sit around swigging beer... but it'd be even MORE fun if you were swigging themed drinks!
Of course, there's too many different things in the game for me to make a unique drink for every single one. So what I did was break everything down into their major groups, then I came up with drinks that could be made with or without alcohol, so you could have fun no matter what your preference. And since I was going the extra mile to do this, it only made sense to get fancy bottles to match (and a basket to hold them all in)!
Here's the general idea I went with when assembling my drinks:
Note: everything is designed to be mixed with rum. Which it did, rather tastily I might add.
For Ale/Rum - Butterbeer (I found good recipes online and actually made this)
For Wines/Elven Wines - Berry Juice (like currant juice, or a mixed berry)
For Swills/Rotguts/Brews - Veggie Fruit Juice
(mix of Naked Juice Green Machine, Carrot/Mango Juice, Coconut Juice. Dash of cayenne pepper for bite. Tastes good, looks NASTY. Add a gummy eyeball or worm for added gross effect)
For Fancy, Sparkly Drinks (Wizards, Pixie, Gnomish, Ambrosia, etc...) - Sparkling Sweet and Tangy Fruit Juice
(this is still a work in progress, but I the basics were sparkling coconut water, guava juice, lime juice, honey)
For Robust Fancy Drinks (Dwarven, Dragonfire, Captains Beer, etc...) - Spiced Birchbeer
(still a work in progress, but the basics were birchbeer w/ maple extract and spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, blackened seasoning and seasoning salt)
Water and Coffee were pretty simple. Just provide either in whatever form you want.
Whew! Talk about a wall of text! But I hope you all like the results of my project here!
And now... time for credits!
Thank you....
Slugfest Games, for making such a cool board game and allowing me use your dragon image: slugfestgames.com/games/rdi/
Wendy, for helping me create the dragon cut-out: www.etsy.com/shop/WoodNotions?…
Mug Mule, for having awesome copper shot glasses: www.mugmule.com/
----
Check out some of the other places where you can find me online!
www.facebook.com/pages/The-Iro…
Blog
ironphoenixmetal.blogspot.com/
If you'd like to purchase any of my work
www.etsy.com/shop/TheIronPhoen…
Image size
1050x4881px 3.5 MB
© 2015 - 2024 Angi-kat
Comments3
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This is so beautiful... I only discoveder the game recently, but I want to make something like this already, alehough I don't have much of the game itself.... yet 
Guess where all my money will go... But this box is briliant and thank you for sharing so much about the craft process, it'll surely come in handy once I start my own!
Guess where all my money will go... But this box is briliant and thank you for sharing so much about the craft process, it'll surely come in handy once I start my own!