The Cube of Summoning

Another item destined by fate

A painted wooden box sitting on an open palm. It's painted with figures on all sides, surrounded by green vinework and red flowers. A brown handled crank is on one side of the box. A Cube of Summoning, a Dungeons and Dragons item, what could be released by opening it?

So much like the Efreeti Bottle, this was also not originally going to be made, mainly due to the difficulties of doing so, and it wasn't a "deck" item, but... a printer destined it to be built, so naturally... it had to be. But how, how could I make anything even remotely resembling a Jack-in-the-box???

The answer: You can't. Or rather, I can't. To get it to eject a one of six random selections at the turn of a crank, that is WAY beyond my abilities. But... what I CAN do, if I simplify it down a lot, is make a box that has the six results available to pull from it! So I found a box of bamboo skewers, which would have a long enough base to be able to stick the results to, and I could hack the long stem off to the needed height! Problem, solved.

Or rather, concept conceived. I started by just using some scrap cards from the many deck builds to slap together a general idea... a small slot in the middle to hold the... ehhhh, six sticks is *really* small, and not really impressive. Also very rectangular. However, if I double it to twelve, it's more squarish, I can just double each of the results, and it looks a bit more impressive. Ahhh, better. Now, on top of the sticks, since it's supposed to be a Jack-in-the-box, I thought to just put a little clown face at the top of those... y'know those little paper springs that you made as a kid (or maybe like me, still), where you take two paper strips and fold one over the other back and forth over and over to make a spring? Well let's make one of those! It won't spring up much, but it'll be springy! And I can use waterproof paper for the strength factor! I tried plastic strips for a moment, but a) glue wouldn't hold it well, and b) it would be too thick. So waterproof paper it is!

And then I had an epiphany! While I can't get a music box inside of there (at least not with my present abilities), what I could do, to at least give a crank *some* use, is put a little jingle bell on the other side, so that when you turn the crank, it will at least make a jingle sound! Yah I know it'll jingle if you shake the thing in general, but it's the principle of the thing. It was either that or glue the crank down and have little text strips beside it saying "pretend you crank this to open it". Having it turn a jingle bell is much better :D

We needed to flatten the bell down slightly to fit into there, and even removed half of the cardboard from that side of the inner structure to accomodate it, but it's in there, and it's free-standing away from any surface except the crank it's jb welded to (I dunno, I figure it'll jingle better that way). The crank itself is bent 18 gauge stainless steel wire, with some tiny pieces of like... on the inside of an old broken power inverter, I disassembled it and yanked out some very thin metal plates that were used for electrical contact, trimmed those round, drilled a hole in them, and used those as support on either side of the box side sorta like a bushing. There's also glue in there (I kept cranking it occasionally as it dried) to solidify up the powdered cardboard stuff that this material is in there. So anyway, we made that as strong as we could. Gotta say, it was quite difficult to get that thing through the side to begin with, kinda mangling it through, which is also the reason for all of that, rebuild the mangled cardboard powder at the hole.

Anyways, that thing installed, we finished gluing up all the sides, and made a lid for it. Now this brought up its own decisions, since in a regular Jack-in-the-box (and indeed in the DMG image), the side walls should go all the way up, and the lid set into the center of it. But that would require an inner lip, which would shrink the opening (and make it taller), making it more difficult to get your fingers into. So we went with the outer-lip method instead. And with all of that decided, we could begin painting! We started by sanding all of the sides flat, which ended up being to the point that all of the black coating was removed, otherwise it made for weirdly different textures, and hit it with a few layers of primer, sanding between to smooth it all down again (the kinda pressboard powder simply couldn't sand smooth on its own). Since the official art (5e.tools) would be more or less impossible for me to recreate, I decided to go with a more abstract approach, searching for abstract crowd painting (Google image search), and basically did that.

Ok, so we've got absract people (with a trippy three bodies one head thing on the lid, just kinda... there wasn't room for three heads so we just tried this, and it works with the creepy vibe in the end. Also heavy impasto for the same vibe), what else is on the official art? Green borders, aight. Actually, clasp first, we came up with what we want to do for that. I'd been rattling around like half a dozen ideas in my head for the lid, do I want to use a pen spring to pop it open (spring is much bigger than I expected), and settled on a simple hook and loop type clasp. We drilled some holes in the appropriate places, added the loops and hooks, and bent them over on the inside (filing partway through the wire to get it to bend at a nice 90 degree angle), and glued those inside the walls. Ok, back to the borders. We created a little corner cover with a pinhole 5mm from either side, and used that to mark a spot around all of the corners (taking into account the lid), and used masking tape to make a straight line between those, and slowly painted all of the borders in. What else we got, vinework in the corners. Let's get some of those going on in there, thank you painting with toothpicks. Flowers, did I want to attempt those red flowers? Let's test making a little stamp out of cardboard. All of the flowers will be more or less identical, but y'know I'm fine with that, theyre simple at best. We needed to blot off the stamp to make it stamp cleanly (making for a cute little blotting paper), and threw a handful of those around the frames, and used a cut off toothpick to yellow-dot the centers. Those hands at the top of the original, I originally planned to omit those for simple impossibility, but it looked... too happy without, not creepy enough. So we went with brown tentacle-like fingers stretching down from the three bodies on the lid, PERFECT! OOHH, that added a suitable level of creepy. That should have been *behind* the vines and flowers, so I needed to re-go over some of those afterwards to put them in front of the fingers again, and we were done, perfect! Amidst all of this the inside of the lid was painted white, the inside of the lip painted green as well, and then several coats of varnish spray overtop to seal it all in. Also, on the bottom we attached the instructions for the item, adding some tiny vinework and flowers onto the corner of that as well, because that looks awesome. It's inset about a half-millimeter into the box surface to keep from sticking out, too.

Only one step left before we can call this a wrap, I need to add that inner lining to keep the lid from sticking closed, a thin layer of felt. We have some 1mm white felt (which I've been using as a spacer throughout), and dyed some green to cut into thin strips to attach after the varnishing is done.

And with a thin strand of wood glue applied with a thread, we attached thin strips of the felt to the underside of the lid around the lip, and decided on how to paint the crank. I'd debated green to match the frames, but that just didn't work. Red, to match the flowers? Yellow or blue to match a shirt? On the official art it's a plain wooden handle. Now, I'd already painted it green in my initial ponderings, but... well, let's throw a ton of scratches across the green to create a wood texture, and then paint brown over that. A little bit of a dark wash overtop will make it a darker brown than the faces (though I kinda liked the idea of it matching the colour of the skin to begin with), and give it a wooden texture and look, DONE! Two coats of topcoat later, and the Cube of Summoning is officially complete!


One more update to add to the bottom of this! So, much like with the Deck of Many Things box, I wanted to make a kinda carrying box for this as well, to avoid the sides getting scratched or gouged or dented or whatnot. So at the same time as the box of many things box, I made this as well! I didn't have a conveniently sized box to just cover, so I had to make this one completely from scratch. And so, finding a size that should fit the box and also the latch, hinges, and crank, and inner lining... 6cm on each side... I cut out the necessary shape from a sheet of cardboard, and glued the overlap sides together. Then, inconjunction with the adhesive felt inner lining, I made specific dents in the cardboard to accommodate the metal fixtures, and additionally for the crank made a separately indented piece of felt, completely flattening the cardboard beneath it. This allowed the box to slide easily in and out of the... box (wow I need to use the word box a lot lol), and not unduly press on the crank, my main concern. After lining the inside, I again pondered what to cover the outside with, and dug through the random images I have from extra pages/misprints from the pdf printouts, I found a map from the Tomb of Horrors (don't let the name scare you lol), and an arbitrary dragon from... I think the 1e DMG that half-printed before some error stopped it and I got the extra pages (where most of my printout cutouts are from). The inside upper lid I dunno, some spider monster that was in there (this box summons different monsters, whatever this is, it'll do!)

So anyways, I took those printouts, double-sided adhesive sheeted the thing, and took some time to arrange the map over the majority of it, though it wasn't quite tall enough, so the underside, where it's also labelled Cube of Summoning, is the map's symbol legend. After that was all well covered, we covered all of that in clear tape to protect it, and... DONE! It looks cool and mysterious, not that players will see the box box (unless I show them after, probably), and we are done! Cool stuff :D


Cube finished October 11, 2025, box on October 22




Naturally you can still open the cube.

(original pre-build draw page kept for style) 		A painted wooden box with green borders surrounding a greyish blue sky with figures standing inside. Abstract paintings of people, with no faces, just coloured areas for their bodies and heads, and a slick of hair on top. Intricate vinework adorns each corner of the green frames, and red flowers with yellow centers are dotted around. The lid shows three figures from all sides, connected to a single head in the center. Brown tentacles come in from the top down to all of the side frames, reaching towards the figures' heads. A crank with a dark brown handle is in the center of one side.

The latch opened, inside the box sits a sturdy paper spring, on top of which sits a jester's face, laughingly springing up from the inside.

Beneath the jester, a set of twelve wooden sticks are arranged in the center. One of them has been pulled up, the underside showing the word Fey, the type of creature that will now be summoned with the opening of the box.

A handful of bamboo skewers beside a set of twelve that are already cut to size, sitting on a cutting board. Beside them is also a template box made out of old playing cards.The concept for the lid that will go over the bamboo sticks, a little paperboard plate that will have a paper spring with a clown face, currently just drawn with pencil. The box is generally put together with the sticks inside, and the lid propped against the side of the box.

The results, printed in tiny text, cut out and glued to the bottoms of the bamboo skewer handles, and then covered in a layer of wood glue that is already beginning to glue clear, currently taped around the outside of the box for drying.A scribbling on a scrap of paper showing the idea for a crank on the outside turning a little jingle bell on the inside of the box, fitting between the larger outer wall and inner wall containing the bamboo sticks.

The crank is installed through the side of the box, a bent piece of wire which is also doubled for the crank portion itself, with the support washer being glued to the box, and the jingle bell on the work table below.A look at the inside of the box, showing that the jingle bell is attached directly to the crank, and has a minor gap between the inner space for the sticks and itself.

The bottom of the box fully constructed, with the inner structure having a lip that extends to the outer walls to seal the bell fully inside of the hollow interior.The cube, with the lid and box painted separately and left to dry after the thickly painted figures were put onto the sides, overtop of a very greyish light blue background.

The lid now attached with hinges, and the clasps attached to the lid and front of the box, showing little cutouts partway through the box material for the wire to be bent over inside of, so that the inside of the box can be kept flush with no metalwork visible.The box mostly painted in the background, with the borders, vinework, and initial red flowers now painted on. I'm holding up a toothpick with a little red stamp for the five petal flower that I was using to place all of the flowers on the box.

The red flowers starting to be painted over a second time. Initially the paint was quite sparse, in that the red paint wasn't in the middle of the flowers nearly as much. In this photo, half of the flowers on one of the sides were painted over a second time to fill them in fully, using the initial stamp as a template for where to paint, and the others to be done were still a lot less vibrant, and you could see the paint quite clearly behind the red.The same side as the last photo, with a figure wearing orange with blonde hair and a figure wearing purple with dark brunette hair, with brown tentacle fingers coming down towards and onto their heads from above, and the vinework in the corners and red flowers with yellow centers spread out around the green borders of the side.

The bottom of the box, glossy with its first coat of varnish, showing the instructions in tiny text in the center of the face, which is painted fully green otherwise, being the bottom, with small green vinework added into the empty area of the printout beside the cube of summoning title, with three red flowers with the yellow center added as well.The box, covered with half of the layers of varnish that it will be getting, being held up by a grey stick, actually a paintbrush now covered in primer, which is taped to the inside of the box. The sides are glossy and still textured with the impasto, showing three sides due to the lid being opened, orange and purple wearing figures on the left, red and orange wearing figures on the right, and the three figures of red, yellow, and blue clothing with the one head on the top. Kabutroid's messy worktable is seen beneath.

A grey looking cardboard box covered with an intricate small dungeons and dragons map over most of the box, and an illustration of a dragon breathing fire on the front.The inside of the cardboard box, showing a scary spider creature on the underside of the lid, and the inner flaps and sides all coated with a black felt fabric, and inside is the cube of summoning, brightly painted in its greens and reds inside the scary dark box.