Prototype Dice Cup

I'd completely forgotten that dice cups were a thing until I saw a few at PAX South. The ones there were serviceable but clearly made from imprinted artificial leather assembled with a simple whip stitch.  I figured I could, at the very least, improve on the art.

And this is what I came up with over the weekend.  So far as it's construction goes it's not much different from the Navigator map case; just shorter and a little bit simpler.  It doesn't need to be able to survive a rain storm so the construction isn't quite as heavy-duty.  It also means I could carve directly onto the "structural" leather.

I probably spent as long coming up with the designs as actually building the thing.  For expedience I modified a pair of public domain wings for the front.  I'd been intending to use a yin-yang dragon on the top but once I had the winged dice for the front I figured the dragon was no longer thematic.  Fortunately it was easy enough to replace the dragons with more d20s.  A bit of resisting, some tinting, a coat of grey gel stain, and then after conditioning it was a simple matter of assembly.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.  I plan to test it out at our usual Wednesday game but so far it seems pretty practical.  Put the dice in, slap the lid on, shake, and upend.  The rim on the lid keeps the dice from skittering all over the place.  Most of the modifications I have in mind post-prototype are cost related.  I'd like to bring the price point down a bit lower if I can.  I expect the final model will probably be a bit shorter (maybe 3.5" instead of 4") but I'll have to see how that looks in drafting. I'm hoping to use those dragon designs on another prototype, perhaps next weekend.