Dungeons and Dragons Dice Box

Turn any hinged box with a lid into a basic portable dice box and tray. Or use it to simply store your dice.

Roll for perception at the end to see if you can detect the bonus explanation for adding a dice tower into the lid!

Supplies

Hinged Box with a Lid

Felt in the color of your choice (Amount of felt needed will vary depending on the size of your box. I didn't even use a full 8.5x11 sheet for the displayed box.)

Measuring tape (Intelligence Check at 8. Make sure it's a fabric tape because it will make measuring the inside of the box easier.)

Hot Glue Gun and Glue

Scissors

(Perception Check)

Bonus Supplies for dice tower

Balsa Wood or Wide Craft Sticks

More Felt (The color isn't as important because you don't see much of it.

Because you are a supremely intelligent being, you understand that using a fabric or bendable ruler to measure the inside of the box from edge to edge means you don't have to do any unnecessary math! Good job on your intelligence roll!

I like to add felt to the sides of the box so as the dice roll around they won't clack against the wood. if you don't want to line the sides, then only measure the bottom.

Using the measurements, cut out basic rectangles for both the lid and the main compartment.

Use the side measurement to cut out the corners. Trust me, you want to cut these corners ;)

As you can see in the illustration, I line the top edge with hot glue. If your glue gun has different temperature settings, use the hotter setting! It hardens quickly, so you have to work fast.

Once you glue the top and get the felt attached along the edge, place a line of glue along the bottom edge where the side and bottom meet.

If you check the images, you can see I used two lines of glue all the way around. Whatever you do, don't glue in the middle of the box! If you do, it will create an uneven surface for the dice to roll on and could turn that natty 20 into a critical fail.

Repeat the process along all the sides. You may decide to only do one line of glue around only the top edge, That works too.

Bonus Action!

Work while the glue is still warm or hot. You can nudge the felt around a little if you didn't get it on in the perfect place the with the first try. Hot glue adheres well to felt, so once it's on, it wont come off easily.

Double Bonus Action!

If any glue comes up around the edges, wait for it to harden completely before removing it. This makes it much easier to remove, and wont affect the felt as much. Drag your fingernail or exacto blade along the edge to trim it away.

And you're done! You now have an awesome lined box to show off your cool dice! Continue on for more bonus material.

Keep your box tidy by putting in a divider. Using a craft stick or piece of balsa wood, cut it down to be about the same height of the sides and the width of the box.

Use hot glue attach felt to one side. As that side sets, place glue on the opposite side and fold the fabric over to the back. You can see I didn't measure or cut my felt down before I did this. It's really easy to just snip off the extra.

You can glue this in to the bottom of the box, or if it is tight enough, you can leave it free floating and the box can change with your needs. Remember, once hot glue hits felt, it will never be the same again. so if you glue in your divider, make sure you place it where you'd like.

This part isn't as much a tutorial, as a "How I did it, maybe you could do it too" step.

Here I used three craft sticks that I glued together by placing three more crafts sticks on the back going the opposite direction.

For the sides of the tower, I combined the side measurements from the bottom and top of the box, and took off a little bit so it would fit.

DO NOT MAKE THIS AS TALL AS YOUR BOX! There needs to be at least an inch gap from the top and bottom of this tower and the sides of the box, otherwise your dice wont fit!

Line the inside of the tower with some left-over felt.

I cut a piece of felt a little longer than a craft stick and glued it on. I then glued it into the tower and cut a smaller piece of craft stick to support the piece. With the long piece of felt, I wrapped it along the bottom piece and glued it down.

Simpy repeat the process on the opposite side.

I used a D20 to decide the placement so I knew it would fit in the space between the two tumblers.

For extra stability, I filled the space inside the triangles with a lot of hot glue. I didn't fill it in all the way, but enough to really sturdy it up.

In the last picture, you can see that I added skinny legs to the sides of the tower. These are cut to the exact height of the lid and the exact width of the lid's sides.

I didn't like my dice just falling straight down from the tower, so I made a little kick bar using the same technique as the dividers for the box.

This bar doesn't need to be big and should still allow space for the dice to go through the opening, so be extra cautious with placement and size!

Now that your tower is complete, so is your box!

You can glue it in to the lid, or leave it as a removable item.

I want this to be completely portable, so I glued it in once I decided on a side. Since the tower is a small design, there is space enough for two sets of dice!

Also, no joke, that natural 20 you see rolled that way without my help! I think my dice like it's new box and tower! Hopefully I didn't use up the good rolls just testing it out. (I was actually recording when the dice rolled the natural 20, so that's the download if you want to witness it happen)

Keep going for some examples of other boxes I've made using all of these same techniques.

These are the boxes I've made so far.

The blue lined box is bigger than the box I used for this tutorial, and I ended up using about 3 sheets of blue felt. The dice tower is also wider and is square. Because I wanted it to work both free standing and in the lid, I attached a back to it. Under the kick out bar, I also included a couple fishing weights so it would be less likely to topple with dice thrown inside. Once the weights were in place, I added more hot glue and attached a square piece of felt to cover it up.

The patterned box was actually a cardboard box our kitchen scale came in. I liked the heft of it, so I used contact paper to cover the exterior, added a sticker I designed to the top, and followed the same steps fore the interior. It used 2 sheets of felt.

Pictured last is the first dice box I made using this technique. I had balsa wood left over from another project. You can see that the dice tower is much wider and only leaves enough space for one set of dice. I decided not to include a divider for this one.