Why the wren?

Hi, I’m Shani, the artist behind Maluridae Dice!

My dice journey started out as a simple quest for the perfect set of dice for my eccentric tabaxi bard, Call of a Bird - or just ‘Bird’ for short. I built many dice pallets from well known mass-market dice brands, intricate metal dice, brightly coloured gemstones and small-run oddities. Never satisfied with what I could acquire, I innocently thought as any creative might - ‘how hard could it be to craft my own set?’

So onward to the internet I went, on a quest for cheap moulds and resin that could be used to pour the perfect set of dice. ‘One-and-done’ was the goal.

Alas, for a perfectionist, it’s not that easy.

And into the rabbit hole of dice making I went. A sizable investment of time and money was put into the hobby, and when I was finally able to craft the perfect set for my tabaxi bard, Bird’s journey ended. That’s the way of the game, unfortunately. It was about this time that I was also considering my branding as an artist, and deciding to become more consistent with my crafting. Naturally, I had to immortalise the bard that started it all, and so I chose to brand myself after the beautiful Australian song birds that live around my home, fairy wrens. That’s also where the name ‘Maluridae’ comes from, the Latin name for the family of wrens common in Oceania.

If you’re interested in supporting the protection of urban fairy wren populations in Melbourne, be sure to check out this project: https://superbcitywrens.com/