As a seasoned veteran of Dungeons and Dragons, I have traveled near and far to engage in many adventures. Early on in these travels I ran into a problem: carrying my equipment. Books, pencils, maps, minis, dice; eventually it all adds up to one full arm full. Books, pencils, and maps have been taken care of thanks to backpacks. Dice bags are a popular part of the hobby, and for good reason. That leaves the minis. So I worked to come up with a solution for storing minis. Now there are also cases for minis, and darn good ones. But they come at a pretty hefty cost. So I set out to make a cheap mini case. I managed to make one for less than $5. And here’s how I did it.
So for this project you’ll need a few supplies. I used a nice jewelry box, but I’ve found equally useful jewelry and tackle boxes for as cheap as $2. Then you’ll need some thin foam and felt. I found mine for $1 a sheet. The amount you’ll need is dependent on the size of your box, but a good way to estimate is find a sheet that matches the floor of your box, get that much foam and twice as much felt. From there you’ll need a bit of glue, some scissors, and you’re good to go!
The first step of our mini case creation we want to take is to make the felt floor of the compartments. The easiest way to go about this is to make templates. Most of these boxes have same size compartments, so templates will save you a lot of measuring. So measure your compartment dimensions, using the walls as guides, and draw the templates on a spare piece of paper. Once you have the templates, use them to cut out pieces of foam. Set them aside and do the same for your walls, creating templates out of spare paper. This time cut them out of felt. These will end up poking above the walls in your box due to the thickness of the foam, so feel free to cut them a little wide to make trimming easier.
Once you have your pieces, it’s time to bring our mini case together. We’ll start with the floors. Apply glue to the bottom of each compartment, spreading it around evenly with a paint brush or similar tool. Then push your foam pieces down onto the floor of the box, making sure that it lies completely flat. Once those pieces are set, move on to the walls. Apply glue in the same fashion, spreading evenly. Then place them on the walls and allow to fully dry. Now you’ll have a bit of felt hanging over, but that’s easy enough to trim off. Once you’re done trimming, your cheap mini case is complete! If you want to, you can add embellishments as you see fit. For my case I just gave it a simple green paint job, but I may go back to it to add more flair.
And there you have it: a cheap mini case that will protect all your small hobby supplies nicely, and at a price of under $5! This design has served me well, as I’m sure it will for you. Once you have yours done, show them to me! I love seeing what you all can come up with. And until next time, keep those dice rolling high!
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