Andrew Crawford, Author at Evermore Stud.io

Chibitronics Intervew

Chibitronics Meet the Maker: Andrew Crawford header

Chibitronics interviewed me (Andrew Crawford) for a Meet the Maker feature on their blog! Details on what I do, my background, and my process.

Purple Twist Top Box

A small, squat, square, deep violet twist-top box with a Celtic knot engraved in a pale brown on each side.

I made these violet wrapping boxes with a classic Japanese packaging closure, and Celtic knots engraved on the sides for the Hex Chonk Boxes.

Celtic art laser paper art paper engineering

Hex Chonk Box

I made some hardwood gift boxes for the 20-sided dice I made, and adorned them with custom silver Celtic knotwork medallions.

Celtic art CNC Jewelry Making laser woodworking

I kept thinking I wanted to get a little more experience with mold making and casting. I have nieces, nephews, and friends who are all playing various tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons regularly. Dice would make great gifts for all of those people. I have also been enjoying the work of some of the resin artists I have found making dice. I didn’t really want to do a bunch of resin casting in my home studio, but had become aware of some less-toxic stone-based “eco resin” casting materials like Jesmonite.

Back in March, I started working on making a big 42mm 20-sided die (a D20, in TTRPG parlance). I modeled it in Blender with a font I like (and have properly licensed), and set about 3D printing one from which to make molds. Although I have been knocking out all sorts of perfect models on my resin printer, there were some issues with getting my Anycubic machine to produce a flawless D20. At first, it was mechanical. It took me a bit to realize the plate had worked itself loose in a way apparently isn’t expected, then a bit to get it fixed correctly. Minor issues after that were eventually resolved by choosing the right resin.

From that print and a printed mold form, I made silicone molds, eventually coming up with a slightly-modified cap mold style that seems to work pretty well.

I cast a bunch of dice in Jesmonite, playing with various mixing and pouring techniques, different pigments, and various approaches to keeping bubbles and voids from ruining the casts. I mostly settled on using an old dental vibration table, some tapping and stretching of the filled molds, and a pressure pot for the later.

I have been painting in the numbers with acrylic paint, and finishing by polishing with bees’ wax.

There are a lot more finished dice than I am showing in this post. I haven’t managed to photograph all of them yet. I may add more in the future.

Once I had some big dice, I decided I needed to make some cool gift boxes for them. That’s for another post, though.

I made a video walking through the journey of getting some finished Jemonite chonks:

You can also watch some of them spin in the demo short:

3D printing Casting Mold Making TTRPG

Double Spiral Chocolate Bar Box

Purple box with a butterfly-style closure with spirals on the flaps.

I designed and fabricated this purple butterfly-closure box adorned with double Celtic spirals to wrap a fancy chocolate bar.

Celtic art Glowforge laser paper art paper engineering

Spiral Crystal Light-Up Pop Up Card

Spiral Crystal pop up card fully open (360º). A yellow pentagonal lattice with triangular panels featuring Celtic triskelion designs is lit from within by a red light. The base card is a dark blue.

I created the Spiral Crystal Light-Up Pop Up Card for the prompt “reverse” in Chibitronics’ #LightUpPoptober project in 2024. The basic mechanical design of the card is based on a piece by Masahiro Chatani. This uses an LED Circuit Sticker, conductive thread, conductive fabric tape, and custom-cut copper traces for the circuit.