This is a wooden nesting dice box I made for use in playing table top role playing games. It features a moon gazing hare motif.
The smaller box is a “stash” box I found that was perfect for storing dice and mini figures for role playing games. The larger bottom box is one I had made to size to use for rolling dice.
I embedded magnets in the interior of the bottom box and bottom of the top box with so they stick together when nested but still separate easily when in use.
The moon is an aluminum circle I hammered. I used liver of sulphur and paint to add the details. It is patterned after the moon over Ireland on the autumnal equinox. I figured that was fitting given the celtic themes of the hare and the moon. That’s also the reason for the oak leaves and acorns (fall). I think if I were to do this over again, I’d have the moon part be a sheet the size of the box instead of a circle, so it didn’t cause that weird bowing space at the top when the top layers were pressed down on it. The cut out in the wood would have been enough to give the moon shape.
A lot of what took so long was me struggling with how to finish the hare after woodburning the design. I also had trouble coming up with an idea for the sides so it would look good whether the boxes were apart or together. For the hare I ended up just staining him and then adding white accents (almost like they were glowing in the moonlight). For the box sides I mixed a blue similar to the night sky on top, and woodburned a spiral scrolling motif that looks like it continues from box to box. I painted that silver to star with the sky and stars color scheme.
The stain didn’t want to soak in evenly on the bamboo lidded box so instead of sanding it down, I just leaned into it and gave it a streaky/swirly look. The more yellow tones of the bamboo box gave the blue some nice green/teal tones in the streaks.
