Oogie Boogie dice

This is going to be a short and simple one. With this prop, I introduced my wife to foamsmithing. She was working on an Oogie Boogie costume, from Tim Burton's "The nightmare before Christmas", and wanted a pair of dice to go with it. In the movie, Oogie Boogie rolls dice with skulls on the faces. A perfect beginner project!

Materials

• 10mm EVA foam floor mats
• 2mm EVA foam sheets
• Contact cement
• Book binding glue
• Acrylic paints
• Satin varnish
• Hobby knife
• Band saw
• Dremel with sanding drum, grinding bits and cutting wheel

Making a cube
To make a cube, you could just stack together sheets of foam until you get the right thickness, but that would require a lot of foam, and if you're using floor mats with a texture, you'd need to sand it away. I didn't want to do that. Instead, I cut six squares for each cube (I made two) and bevelled the edges at 45°. This is done easily with a band saw; if you don't have a band saw, it could also be done with a bench sander or, but that's a bit trickier to get it right, a Dremel.
The squares were then glue together with contact cement. No need to sand away any texture, and a perfect cube!

The faces
This is where my wife stepped in. She had downloaded a template for the faces and traced them all on 2 mm thick foam sheets. Next, she cut them all out and glued them on the cubes.

The next was done by me again (she doesn't like to use power tools). With a grinding bit on my Dremel, I cut out the eyes and smoothed the edges and corners a bit. I also added some scratches and cuts with a cutting wheel. Of course, I forgot to take a photo of that, but you can see it in the next step.

Painting
This was, again, done by my wife. First, the dice were primed with book binding glue, and then got a dark red base coat. After it had dried, the eyes and scratches were painted black. Finally, the entire prop got a coat of sating varnish.

And here's us, with our costumes and the dice, of course, at Elf Fantasy Fair Haarzuilens. 

Posted in: EVA Foam,Props,Tim Burton