How Jeremy Made Dice Portraits for His Nieces

Jeremy Klammer wanted to make something special for his nieces' birthdays. In 2023, he created dice portraits — their faces made out of actual dice, then painted to match their personalities.

The idea

Jeremy makes custom gifts for his nieces every year. For K's 5th birthday and C's 8th birthday, he decided dice portraits would be memorable and unique.

Each portrait is a 35×47 dice grid (1,645 dice), mounted in a 26×32-inch frame — larger than originally planned, but the bigger size made the portraits really stand out. (Our dice art guide has a size table if you want to see what other grid sizes come to in dice and inches.)

The process

Finding the right photo

Jeremy tested 20-30 photos of each girl in Diceify before finding the ones that worked best. Clear, straight-on shots produced the best results. Side angles and busy backgrounds didn't translate as well to the dice pattern — the same advice as the pick-your-image step of our guide, and the gallery shows what close-cropped portraits look like as dice.

Once he found the right photos, he adjusted the cropping and zoom until the dice pattern looked right, then saved it as a template for the physical build.

Building the frame

For the physical construction, Jeremy:

• Made a plywood base backed with 2×4s to prevent warping
• Used frames sized 26×32 inches to fit the 35×47 dice grid
• Laid out all the dice on a flat surface first, matching the Diceify template
• Transferred them row by row to the frame with Liquid Nails (the glue-first approach, the safer of the two methods described in Why I Built Diceify)
• Painted the backgrounds after everything was glued down

Personal touches

Each portrait was customized to reflect the personality of each girl.

K's portrait

• Her favorite colors: pink, purple, and turquoise
• A yellow school bus in the background — she had just started riding the bus that year

C's portrait

• Sunset colors: red, orange, and yellow
• Pink bubble pattern in the background — she'd just learned to blow bubble gum bubbles

The fingerprint tradition

One special touch: at each birthday party, all the guests put their fingerprints on the artwork. Parents, grandparents, cousins, friends — whoever attended. It's a tradition Jeremy started at his oldest niece's first birthday, turning each piece into a memory of who was there.

Time investment

Each piece took over 100 hours to complete — testing photos, building the frame, laying out and gluing 1,645 dice, and painting included. Jeremy notes that now that he knows the process, future pieces would go faster. His tips for anyone trying this:

• Test lots of photos before committing to one
• Straight-on, well-lit shots work best
• Lay everything out before gluing
• Add something personal to make the gift meaningful