Rusty Industrial or Steampunk Style Dice Tower

How I Made this Dice Tower

Pringles offers versions of their potato chips in a shorter can, and that is what I used for this dice tower model. I like the shorter can for a dice tower because it seems less tippy and not as in-the-way at a gaming table. 

To suggest the sheets of metal cladding, I used spongy foam material that can be found at a craft store. I wanted to try this because it seemed that it would be easy to curve around the can. 

For the rivets, I used "Self Stick Gems" that I found at a craft store, and used glue to stick them on (was not going to trust the self-stick feature). 

There is a brick-texture at the bottom of the tower that can be seen in some of the photos above. That is textured Styrene that I bought at Blick's art store in Boston. 

Fast-forward to the nearly-completed tower, below. For materials used in the tray and the top of the tower, refer to my other post called "Dwarven-Style Dice Tower." Basically I used blue XPS foam for some parts but the thinner sides and the bottom are made from Palight PVC board. 

I was experimenting with using Lego pieces as decoration in this (shown in this picture sitting on the spider-web item, for example), but ended up not using any. The spider-web style piece was cut out from something I found at the Dollar Store -- they are plastic and the size of a dinner plate, that are supposed to be used at picnics to support a paper plate. I thought it had the look of some sort of industrial platform. 

Before painting the rust effects, I textured it here and there with modeling paste, using a stippling motion with a cheap 1" brush. Then I used acrylic paints found at a craft store, shown in the picture below, to paint the rust effects. Sometimes I sponged it on and other times stippled again with the 1" brush. I also used gray and steel-metallic paints as both undercoats and later dry brushing. 

I added decorative features like gears, pipes and the orc skulls. The pipes are Styrene. The gears are metal -- I bought them online.

Here are the colors used to paint the gears and pipes, below. It is meant to be oxidized bronze or copper and I thought the blue was a nice complement to the rust.