D&D Dungeon Tiles (Pt. 10): Painting the Cave

 After I had finished attaching, shaping and gluing everything to my Cave Frame, I sealed it with a couple of coats of the Black Magic Crafts sealer 

(black paint and matte mod podge) and let it dry. 

I was especially careful to get the entirety of the removable corner piece 

since it would need to be painted on all sides.

(Not sure what I’m talking about? 

Check out my D&D Tile series from the beginning. I’ll wait.)

 

Once it was dry, I had to decide how I wanted to paint it. I wanted the cave to feel like it could be a real place, so I went with a color scheme similar to 

my inspiration caves but with less red and orange tones.

I started by overbrushing a dark brown (burnt umber, I think) over the entire frame as well as the tile insert. I picked out the rocks in a medium grey and the skull, bones and sticks in a creamy antique white. 

Then I did a light dry brushing of a light grey across the floor.

 

I used the same medium grey for the walls, pools and stalagmites, and brushed on layers of lighter browns, golden tans and creams to get a more variegated look. I also wet blended a few colors onto 

the stalagmites, so they have subtle striations.

 

After a drybrush of light grey (heavier on the edges of the cave walls), followed by a lighter dry brushing of cream, I coated the 

terraced edges of the pools in cream and called it good.

 

I added a grey brown wash over everything, did a quick brown wash on the skull and bones and walked away so I wouldn’t keep adding to it.

 

After a couple of coats of spray polyurethane (which really 

brings out the browns) this is what it looks like:

  

And Mr. Skull Head’s close-up:

For the water in the pools, I used more of the clear 5-minute epoxy (I think it was a large tube and a small tube, but it may have been 2 large tubes). 

I wanted it to look like clear still water, so I didn’t add any color to the resin, but I did go over it with a lighter to pop as many bubbles as I could before it set.
 
Here’s what the Cave Set looks like in natural light once the resin cured:
 

So, my final thoughts on the Cave Set . . . I am really proud of how it came out and I’m glad I decided to play around with such a detailed idea. 

I think it reads as ‘fantasy cave’ rather than foam and hot glue on cardboard.
 
I wish the colors hadn’t blended as much on the stalagmites once 

the poly went on, but overall, I’m happy with it.
 
Elroy kept giggling about how to integrate the corner into game play and reveling in how much destruction a creature who took down 

Mr. Skull Head could wreak on an unsuspecting party.
 
Elroy and I haven’t really talked about what else to do for additional Cave Tiles outside of adding more stalagmite pools or rocks that characters would have to navigate around. Maybe a lava flow or a geyser or something similar.  
 
This set is pretty adaptable without needing any toppers, so if Elroy comes up with any, he absolutely has to have they’ll be farther down the list than the ones for the other sets. I kind of want to play around with some swamp tiles 

but that will have to wait until things settle back down again.
 
Any ideas or suggestions for more tiles or for some toppers?

D&D Dungeon Tiles (Pt. 9): Carving the Cave Walls

 I had drawn a rough outline of where I wanted the cave walls before I added the hot glue but since my foam trays were too small to do the frame sides 

in solid pieces, I decided I needed to make a pattern.

 

(Not sure what I’m talking about? 

Check out my D&D Tile series from the beginning). I’ll wait.)

 

This was easier said than done. I found a piece of lined school paper and started by overlaying the edge along the cave mouth & left wall. I traced the outlines on the frame (it helped that I had drawn them in black marker). Because the walls are farther into the frame, 

I was able to keep the outline within the length of my paper.

 

Then I rotated the paper, matched up the top corner and traced the top side. I repeated the process on a second sheet of paper for the remaining side as well as the larger stalagmite bases I planned to make out of foam. 

Then I cut the pattern pieces out, matched them up and taped them together to match the frame. I made sure to test my pattern against the frame to make sure everything fit where it was supposed to. I also made sure to include 

the cut line for the hidden chamber in the top right corner.

 

Once that was finished, I traced the pattern onto my foam, marking any seam lines on my pattern. I cut out the base layer and glued it into place using my mod podge and paint bottles to hold down any stubborn pieces.

While it was drying, I took my pattern and cut the second layer of cave wall. I made sure to vary the seam placement on the top layer. I ended up cutting out most of the seam lines later but having solid foam pieces cover 

the base seams was worth the extra effort.   

 

I also cut my corner cover for the hidden chamber and glued it, making sure I staggered the connecting edge so that the inset holds it in place slightly better. Then I beveled all the foam edges and textured all the foam with a foil ball.

 

I mixed up another batch of the dried tea and mod podge that I used on the Cave Floor Tile and covered the rest of the floor. I added some of the small rock scatter as well as some dried oregano and rosemary from 

my spice drawer to simulate blown in leaves and sticks.

 

I really liked how it all was looking, but the back cave wall was too bare. 

So, I grabbed a small skull bead out of my stash, 

a couple of toothpicks and my hot glue gun and got to work. 

First, I filled the hole in the skull bead with a small dot of hot glue and smoothed it out with the side of the tip. I could also have tried cutting away the edges of the hole so that it looked like the skull had been punctured 

(maybe by a pickaxe or war hammer). Perhaps on another tile.

I cut the toothpicks down to about an inch long, maybe an inch and a half and put small blobs of hot glue on each end. I used the tip of the hot glue gun to shape the blobs into bone type shapes, with a hip socket on one end and a kneecap on the other. Once they were dry, I carefully broke one of 

the bones most of the way (but didn’t separate the pieces).

Then, I arranged the skull and bones in a small pile against the cave wall and added more leaves and sticks (oregano and rosemary) for flavor.

Isn’t he fun? I was pretty impressed by how well the bones came out. 

Not too bad for hot glue and toothpicks.

 

Here’s the frame with the hidden corner:

And here it is with the corner removed:

Now comes the hard part . . . painting everything.

 
 
Next up: Painting the Cave

D&D Dungeon Tiles (Pt. 8): Creating the Cave Frame

 Now that I had switched gears, it was time to do some research. 

I had an idea in mind for how I wanted the cave to look (because I’d gotten to take a cave tour on a road trip when I was younger) but I wanted the cave to feel like something out of fantasy rather than a strict reproduction of an actual cave. Elroy wanted a limestone cave with playable floor space

 and (if I could figure out how to make it work) a hidden chamber 

that players would have to do a perception check to find.
 
(Not sure what I’m talking about? 

Check out my D&D Tile series from the beginning. I’ll wait.)
 
Now it was time to find some inspiration images. And boy did I ever.

The Buchan Caves Reserve in Australia is amazing. 

Like high fantasy brought to life. I was especially inspired by the Royal Cave with its clear terraced pools and multiple layers of stalagmites. 

But how to simulate it, especially since I was trying to keep 

each piece as flat as possible for easier storage?

 

I started by drawing out where the cave walls would be. I decided to keep all of the pools to one side of the cave and to place the hidden chamber in one of the corners on the opposite side of the frame. From there I drew out basic shapes for the main stalagmites and used the same process from the

Oasis tile to remove the top few layers of the cake board for the pools. I also used this technique for the hidden chamber to give it room to 

include the floor texture under the lift-away foam lid.  

I had no plans to use any sand on this frame, so I needed to find a way to edge the pools that would look lumpy like the terraces in the Royal Cave. 

I considered cutting narrow foam edges but 

ultimately decided that I had a better solution. Hot glue.

After I made the terraces, I used more hot glue to create a bunch of tiny stalagmites growing around the larger ones. Since the Buchan stalagmites are uneven and blobby like melted wax, I wasn’t too worried about making the little ones perfect. I made small blobs of hot glue, came back to 

add height and used the hot sides of the tip of the glue gun 

to smooth and round anything that looked too funny.

One quick note about the hot glue; it really only sticks to the top layer of the cake board. I found myself needing to reinforce the terrace edges to make sure they stayed stuck down, the smaller stalagmites, too. I either added another row of hot glue or a quick dab of mod podge to re-adhere it.

Once I was happy with that, 

it was onto the next challenge . . . adding the foam.

 

 

 

Next up: Carving the Cave Walls

D&D Dungeon Tiles (Pt. 7): I thought we were doing a Dirt road . . .

 This set gave me fits. Originally, I had planned to make the frame something like a grassy field with a dirt road cutting through it. 

Unfortunately, this was not to be.

 I wasn’t sure how to do the tree-line / forest edge on top of the 

embankment since I was trying to keep each set as flat as possible, 

so I started with the Dirt Road Tile.

 

(Not sure what I’m talking about? 

Check out my D&D Tile series from the beginning. I’ll wait.)

 

My first attempt, I tried covering the tile with a single layer of foam, intending to press wheel tracks into the surface. Unfortunately, the trays don’t give enough flat foam to cover the entire tile in a solid piece. 

This left me with seamlines that I attempted to cover. 

I realized that the sand I had was far too coarse to mimic a packed dirt road and trying to cover the seam lines with is just made the 

whole thing look like a dirty plywood subfloor. 

Not the look I was going for.

I ripped off the foam and watched a bunch of YouTube DIY terrain videos 

(like this one). Outside of getting me hooked on watching resin diorama vids, I also realized that the contents of tea bags could make pretty decent groundcover and look like forest loam and debris after painting. 

This time I didn’t bother with the foam layer and started gluing straight to the bare side of the cake board. I started off painting a layer of mod podge and pouring the tea onto the tile, but it didn’t adhere as well as I wanted. I tried adding more mod podge on top, but since I didn’t remember to thin it 

with water, it was too thick and I had to add more tea. 

I realized that my best option was to do what I had with the sand and mix the tea into a small pool of mod podge and using my brush to scoop it onto the tile. I added more of the quartz rock scatter in small outcroppings in a few places to break things up. I even used the metal edge of 

a wax seal to press grooves into the tea.

 

This is the look I was going for when I painted . . .

It came out like this . . .

It was not quite what I’d hoped for. But when I showed it to Elroy, he thought it would make a good cave floor if I gave it a grey wash.
 
And so, a new concept for this set was born . . .  I would make the frame into a cave.
 
 
 

Next up: Creating the Cave Frame