Cheap dice trays

[SotF]

As you can see; I already managed, and for a more than reasonable price too... 

With a Sam's Club membership, their mousepads with a picture on it come to about $1.50 locally...

[Daeothar]

With you mentioning Walmart and prices in $, I'm assuming you're in the US.

Alas; we over here in the Old World do not have those channels, but I'm more than happy with the way (and price) this one turned out regardless...

[Malebolgia]

Well, I went ahead and immediately got me a larger frame at Ikea too. Can't remember what it's called, but its inside dimensions are 23x23cm.

And then I ordered a larger sized mousemat on AliExpress, with my own design on it, for the whopping sum of €2,36. But as you can see from the posting date, it took its time arriving.

The image is very true to the original, and considering the price and medium (cloth mousemat) pretty much perfect!

I simply took the backing plate off the frame, traced it on the mousemat with a technical pencil and then cut the mat using scissors. I then glued the mousemat to the back plate, put that back in the frame and I was done.

And as the (plexi)glass of the frame was removed, the added 2mm thickness of the mat was actually a perfect fit!

WOAH!
That is awesome man. And now I had to order those too...
Placed an order for three mouse mats (for 6 trays) for my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles project for Poldercon next year
Thanks Ruben, that was an awesome idea!!

[Daeothar]

Cool; glad you like it; it's  an evolution of your own idea of course

And I'm already curious about your next Poldercon project! Turtles you say eh? 

[Malebolgia]

Yeah! Each of the four players controls a Turtle and I will be controlling the Foot Clan. Each of the Turtles has a deck of individual action cards, so they will play differently. Leo will be the Leader and Donnie will be the tech-nerd. A lot is based on the old 8-bit NES-game (although I played it on a PC). So basically full half-shell ninja action on a city board! I'm writing the rules now and it's progressing nicely. Expect mayhem, lots of combos with dice and cards, teamwork, helping each other with cards and tokens, a lot of different Foot Clan miniatures and hopefully a lot of fun!
Now if I can get my hands on a cheap Technodrome toy everything will be more epic...

[Daeothar]

Sounds really cool!

Now if I can get my hands on a cheap Technodrome toy everything will be more epic...

I'd say... According to Wikipedia, it has (amongst others) 972 rooms, an entire motorpool, a starfighter deck and an indoor pool and sauna!

Perhaps we should suggest a different venue for Poldercon 2019? Like the Amsterdam Arena maybe? 

[Malebolgia]

Sounds really cool!

And now even cooler:



Ordered three 18x22cm mouse mats through Ali Express. They were custom and I provided them with two designs. Each design contained 2 identical prints, so with 3 mouse mats I had enough to make these 5 dice rollers. I purchased some extra RIBBAs and waited for the mouse mats to arrive. Only 10 days later! Darn fast!
I used a supersharp exacto to cut the mats. Turns out this works better than scissors. Then glue the designs in place and I now have 4 dice rollers for all players and 1 dice roller for me...as leader of the Foot Clan!
Yesterday I saw Customeeple now also does custom etched dice at good prices. Oh dear...this project is getting out of hand...

[Daeothar]

Great stuff! Your Turtles game is promising to be quite the experience already

I have some plans for a batch of these trays myself. But I'm on a deadline and the previous order I sent took its time arriving (about a month). Did you use the expedited service, or the regular one?

Can you please share the AliExpress store you used? Perhaps it's a better/faster one than the one I used, as I really need to receive them within two weeks...

[Malebolgia]

This is the one:
https://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/0.html?spm=a2g0s.9042647.6.2.1d5f4c4dkoPL67&orderId=91832327247538&productId=32735259243

And paid for regular shipping. Went really fast too!

[Daeothar]

Thanks; I'll give them a go... 

[Daeothar]

You were right; they were fast; mats were in-country within 10 days. Too bad PostNL screwed up (again)...

I wanted to give each member of my gaming group a tray on my birthday party (on Saturday the 16th), with a design specific to us as a group, with each mat individualized with the name of each player.

Track and Trace reported the mats had been handed off to the local carrier (PostNL), and on the specified day, I did receive a package (on Thursday 14th), but it was another item I had ordered from AliExpress on the same day. But no mats.

Then the delivery day was moved up daily, with the status remaining 'At the Sorting Center'. So on Wednesday 20th I called them, and they told me it had been lost/misplaced at the sorting center and the sender should file a complaint. Now; AliExpress states they will refund after 60 days, but PostNL has a set period of 45 days to place a complaint, or they will not accept it.

See where that was going?

But to be safe, I did send the seller a message, even though they had done everything right on their side. Luckily, on Thursday 21st, my wife messaged me that the mats had arrived! The track and trace app still said it was at the sorting center though.

And because our regular gaming nights are on Thursdays, I had to rush to get them all finished and wrapped up in time, but I made it, and everyone was elated to receive theirs. Mission accomplished, even though I would have liked it better to have been able to hand them out during my party. But they were put to use immediately, and they work a treat; no more dice careening off the table, getting lost under the couch or other scary places, and they all loved the fact each individual tray was subtly different.

As a bonus, because I only needed 7, I made an extra one for my daughter as well, although this one had a fairy tale theme (obviously ) and she was so thrilled by it, she took it to bed with her the first night...

I had no time to take pictures of them all together, but I will take some of mine tonight, so you'll get the idea...

[Daeothar]

And here it is.

Each highlighted name is in white, the other names in a dark grey (GDPR-ed into blurs). The logo in the middle is a referral to one of our RPG house rules (we play a D10 system), where a triple 8 result always means an automatic , near godlike succes.

This particular type of frame (Ikea's Hovsta) has a small plastic frame allowing you to display your pictures 'deep', instead of flush with the (plexi)glass. These were white, so I had to prime them and then spray them black.

I then used the plexiglass from the frame as a template for tracing where to cut the mousemat. I simply drew a diagonal cross on it, corner to corner to establish the exact center and since my design also has a clearly defined center, I could slide the plexiglass exactly into position before tracing.

Then I used a sharp X-Acto blade and metal ruler, just like you did, to cut the mat out; way sharper (and straighter) than scissors btw.

After that, it was a simple case of glueing the mousemat onto the original frame's back, which is an MDF like material. I first did pry off the hooks and stands from it though, and as the back is black, I touched up the holes with some black acrylic paint.

I did contemplate flipping the back over, but then I would have had to smoothen the broken up surface of the black side, as not doing that meant having lumps under the mousemat. So I didn't do it, and as a result, the bottom surface is less than perfect, but as we rarely will see it anyway, I'm willing to overlook the imperfection.

Then it's replacing the backplate back into the frame, and bending the metal clips back down to secure it into place, and the dice tray is ready for action...

[Malebolgia]

Awesome mate! Great to see this design and execution, really professional result
And urrrrrrggh about the Postnl treatment, that sucked hairy balls man. So annoying if it gets clucked up like that. But good they finally appeared and everybody loved them