Easy RPG Spellbook Dice Tray

This project is a gift for one of my players. His character is a necromancer. He will eventually become Lich. For now the group slained other Lich and obtained Lich King's Black Tome. This milestone in a campaign deserves something special.
It is also annoying when my friend roll his dice and it vanish under the table.

So here it is: 2 in 1, extra easy to make, standing out dice tray and dice box holder!

You will need (not all essential but some will make it really easy):
- thick, creamy acrylic paint or ink
- metallic silver paint
- some brushes
- glue
- masking tape
- double sided tape
- black glitter
- binding clips
- felt sheet
- some white textured 180 gsm paper
- snips or scissors
- craft blade
- pencil
- cool sticker
- small jar to clean your brushes
- cutting mat

And last but not least: mache book box you can buy at your local craft store or on Amazon.

Paint everything black. Use well covering thick and creamy paint or ink. Pick a brush with thicker bristles. This will give you more interesting texture on book cover.
I used acrylic ink. After it dries it's waterproof.

My silver metallic paint have really BRUTAL coverage abilities (everything named with hammer word is brutal) you can put it on rusted metal. If you are using something more gentle, use masking tape to secure page edges area like showed on the pictures. Help yourself with knife if you want to remove exceed amount of tape in problematic places.

Then brush that liquid necromantic vibe all around the tome. Also apply it inside.
Remove masking tape and let it dry.

Pro tip: use gloves to keep your hands clean.
Clean your brush. You will need it in the next step.

Add masking tape on already painted area around pages to protect black paint. Be sure it's dry before doing so.
Paint edges with your silver metallic paint. Use long strokes to use your brush feature of creating interesting texture. If your paint is thick enough you will get effect that can mimic book pages very well.
Carefully remove masking tape and let it dry again. Metallic paint usually get longer to dry, especially if coat is thick. Clean your brush afterwards.

When your book is painted and dry you can start decorating it. My initial concept that I changed was to use some adhesive gems. Pictures should give you an idea of different options when it comes to ornaments and decorating your spellbook.
You can use some double-sided high tack tape to create interesting geometric shapes. I decided to make simple frame.
Be careful when you cut tape with scissors or craft blade. Stains made of real blood are always lame decorative element.

Peel off protective tape from your double-sided tape. Add some black glitter. I want my gift to be more toned down, but you can try some silver or gold glitter.

Pro Tip: put some paper underneath the spellbook on this step. This way you can catch exceeding amount of glitter and put it back to your shaker. Use glitter that will match your favourite theme. If you are preparing spellbook for your fire wizard, use orange/red ect.

I also decided to add some short strips on the book spine.

Get yourself a sticker. If you can't buy anything you like just find interesting picture on internet and print it on adhesive paper like I did. I took this skull from renaissance book scan. Some old books keeps hidden gems.


Pro tip: print various sizes to find the one that fits your needs.

I am using black cover and sticker with black background. In this case it is good to have some kind of border. Especially because sticker have very clean look with no texture and book cover is more gritty. If you can't hide difference between textures or colour then expose that difference like I did. Otherwise your project my look cheap.
For my border I just go for 180 gsm textured paper. Cut out square that will be slightly bigger than your sticker. Put sticker on the square.

Position the element in the front of spellbook cover.

Pro tip: It does not need to be in the centre. Go with the flow. You can use some Blu-Tack or tiny bit of double-sided tape to hold it in place when you will find right spot for it.

Add horizontal and vertical strips of double-sided tape. That will hold your decoration in place. If you don't like those strips you can simply glue your ornament to the book cover. You can use wider double sided tape and use it around picture instead across front cover.
Peel off protective tape from double-sided tape and add more glitter. You can see on the picture that I go with it over my white frame. Black glitter on white surface gives that smoky effect. I didn't want it to be fully white because this tome should look really old and maybe a bit dirty.

Now it's time to make those dices bounce bit less and more quiet.

Measure inside dimensions of your box. Then cut your felt sheet to fit. You can use some binding paper clips to keep your felt sheet in place. My piece is two times longer than box length so I can fold it in a half. That will give me two layers of felt sheet.
Apply glue to the bottom of dice tray. Mount your felt, add glue again and then fold it to join it together. Let it dry. In a meantime clean your tools and working area.

Ready to roll!