Gelatinous Cube on less than a buck...

I love the infamous Gelatinous Cube.

I hate Jell-O, but I do love the weirdness of it's magical creation deep inside a dungeon cell or hall...
I've never been able to find an actual licensed Wizards of the Coast version for an even mildly ludicrous price, and I've not been overly excited about the versions I've seen available from other crafty geek types; too opaque, too cartoony, too pink (yes....pink) or just plain cheesy. Plus, I love the possibility of an "interior space" for those moments when/if a player character has the misfortune of seeing the inside...

I've won awards for gelatinous cubes before. I made one of my first out of a small rectangular clear box left from a bicycle tire repair kit, covered in epoxy and with the added feature of a half-exposed dissolving corpse (thank you Heroscape figures...great for parts but hated your huge bases). It won First Place at the 2010 Conduit Convention in Salt Lake City. I was surprised to say the least that there was anyone anywhere that appreciated this sort of "geek craft."

The one aspect of it I did not love, was that it always felt a bit small to me. I wanted players (someday) to encounter a REALLY BAD gelatinous cube, like a full passage blocking monstrosity Gary Gygax coukd be proud of. 

This one might be close. 

BUT...I wanted the challenge of seeing if I could make this on a whim with what I had just laying around, and on the cheap. Mission accomplished...total cost about $.50 give or take a bit...

I started with a clear plastic badge holder from (ironically) a past convention...the hard plastic badge holder stuff. Once I cut this out into a foldable square and bet the edges to hold their shape, I covered the whole thing in packing tape. Plain old clear packing tape. 

Once the packing tape was sealed, creating, essentially, a clear square, I simply cut through the bottom side with a hobby knife, leaving one side open.

This was then covered slowly in layer upon layer of hot glue. the real key her is the layers. too much too soon and it all blends together giving too much clarity and possibly melting your packing tape and plastic shell. Layers add depth, dimension, a sense of "movement" and "life" to this gelatinous mass, but also increase the "opaqueness" of the clear snot-like goop, and frankly just looks down right creepy...

Lastly, I applied a thin wash of lime green acrylic to the inside. This allowed a slight green glow to shine through from the inside, giving the cube just a  touch of color.

And the final version, well fed on a curious dungeoneer...his now slowly dissolving corpse just barely visible beneath the layers. 

A perfect resemblance of the infamous oddity that is...the Gelatinous Cube...