Taverns need tankards, and wizards’ towers need alchemy supplies. I wanted some of each on hand for encounters where they’re appropriate. The scaling on these will be less than ideal – who can chug down a half-gallon potion of healing in a single six-second combat round? – but they’ll add flavor to the settings they’re placed in.
Hold my beer
To make some drinking vessels I followed a technique similar to the ones in this TheDMGInfo video. It turns out that actual clear straws are tough to find in my area, but I noticed a Wawa smoothie my daughter was about to drink came with one, so I stole it before she used it. (Though I’m the one who paid for the thing to begin with, so I guess it wasn’t really theft…)
I cut a few bits of straw and painted the insides of several with what I hoped would dry to an amber color. Some were left unpainted, because there are no free refills in D&D. I dripped hot glue onto parchment paper and stuck the straw bits into them. When the glue dried I stuck little wooden handles on the sides of a few of them.
I peeled them off the paper, trimmed the glue blobs on the bases down with scissors, and painted the handles brown.
I forgot to take a photo of the end results before I started gluing them onto some other surfaces. That process will be described in a near-future post which will include photos.
In which my wife formulates a Greater Potion of Frustration Removal
There are a lot of videos around on making potions, but I really liked the look of the ones in this Wyloch video. So I found a bunch of beads (and FYI, the tiny “seed beads” from the video are available in an assorted multi-pack for ten bucks at Walmart – much better by volume than the craft store prices) and got out the hot glue gun.
The combination of my big clumsy fingers, those tiny beads, and hot glue did not lend themselves well to this attempt. I created a number of stringy, blobby messes and singed a few fingertips (several of them mine), and when I tried to trim off the excess glue, my potions fell apart.
I tried super glue, and found it near-impossible to hold the pieces together steadily long enough for it to set. The gel was only slightly better. I thought about trying to find some pins to push through a block of foam to mount the pieces on, but I wasn’t sure if the pins would fit through the seed beads.
Then my wife suggested a method that induced a facepalming “duh!” from me.
String.
Tape one end down. Thread some beads onto it in the desired order. Dab a bit of super glue onto the string, then slide the beads into place over the glue and let them dry while you start beading up another string.
Clip the strings, and your potions are ready!
I also made one or two by just cramming a stick into the bead, to make them look corked. I ended up with a little pile of colorful potions, and a few amber-colored ones that can also serve as alcohol bottles.
Two suggestions if you ever find yourself needing to do this again:
1) Most beads are designed to be sewn on to something, so a sewing needle will pass through their holes. This saves a lot of time and fumbling trying to get them on to a floppy piece of string. If the sewing needle will not fit, tie your string tight and secure both ends. Cover the string in PVA or CA (super) glue, and let it dry. The glue will stiffen the fibers to the point that you can just poke it through the beads with no difficulty.
2) Coat the string you use to form the potions with a small amount of petroleum jelly. Wipe as much as possible off after you have done so. Petroleum Jelly/Vasoline repels superglue. Thus, you can use the string to guide droplets of superglue inside the center of the beads, and avoid any mess on the outside. You can also guarantee the string will not get stuck to the inside.