Mushroom Dice

Hi! Mushroom dice are fun and cute additions to your likely endless supply of gaming dice. The TTRPG gaming communities and the lovers of a cottagecore, fae-esque aesthetic are quite often one and the same, and these dice are the perfect combination of both. However, even people who don't enjoy mushrooms will find use in this instructable, as it really describes how to cast any dice with an insert, just follow the steps and replace the mushrooms. I hope you have fun making dice!

You will need for this project:

A dice mold (I used a 7 piece sharp edge dice mold)

Enough resin to fill a dice mold (likely more so you can do a couple pours to work out errors)

An equal amount of hardener (or whatever the ratio is for your resin, I used a 2:1 resin to hardener mix resin)

Alcohol dye (Any color you want)

Small mushrooms or whatever you want to insert! (Just be careful they fit within the dice mold without touching the sides)

Plastic cups, popsicle sticks, and gloves for mixing the resin, and cardboard to mix and pour on top of

Measure out whatever the ratio of your resin and hardener is (make sure it is as exact as you can get it). Mix them together and mix for five minutes straight, scraping the sides and making sure it is fully mixed together. Try not to whip too much air into the mixture, as that can cause a lot of bubbles to be in your final mixture.

After you mix the resin and hardener, you can add alcohol dye for color. I went with a mixture of turquoise and blue to get the final color I want, but you can add any color you want. The lighter the color the easier it is to see the dice, but the less pronounced the color is. Add about 3-4 drops of color for an average batch size (a quarter of a plastic cup). More or less won't hurt the final, unless you dump the whole bottle in or something. REMEMBER the amount of drops of each color you add, this will be important later.

You can now pour the resin into the mold. Pour resin into the mold so that each dice is about half full. Leave the resin out (with NO lid on) for the gel time of the resin, which you can usually find on the bottle or a quick Google search.

Do it again! After the gel time is up, mix up another small batch of resin (repeating steps 1 and 2) with the same color as before (color actually doesn't matter as much because slight differences will dissipate as it cures, but a solid color will be more consistent). Using tweezers, place the mushrooms or other items in the gel resin already in the mold (make sure they aren't touching the sides or bottom and are roughly in the middle). Then pour the resin you just mixed over the other resin and mushroom until slightly overflowing. After leaving it for a couple minutes to let bubbles leave, place the lid on the mold. You will have to secure it in place (I did so by placing the resin and hardener on top as a weight). Leave this for the full cure time of the resin before removing.

Too many bubbles - whip in less air when you mix, secure lid properly, use a heat gun after bubbles rise to the top

Mushrooms sink - Wait longer before adding mushrooms

Too light color - Add more alcohol dye or use a darker color

Resin doesn't cure - Mix longer or faster when mixing the resin, or check your ratio of resin to hardener