The Crafter’s iPhone Case, or, another way to easily impress your friends

By now you may have seen these puppies on the interwebs. Or maybe you haven’t, in which case (no pun intended) check it out! It’s a cross stitch-able iPhone case! You can make whatever design you want and show off your crafty styling to all your friends. Who really needs an Otter Box, anyway? 😉

Earlier last year you could only order these cases from poorly translated Korean websites but now they’re all over the place! Well, at least two other websites that I found carry them. Justin got me this one for Christmas from Think Geek, a site that sells mostly comic book and Star Wars related chotchkies.

You have the option of blue, black and white cases (you can probably find more colors on other sites) and each come with three little embroidery thread packs and a needle. I didn’t bother using their thread and instead picked from my own stash.

Not really knowing what I wanted to do I went with a simple chevron style design and mixed up my threads and stripe thicknesses.

 

It took a LONG time. Seriously. I don’t often do cross stitch or embroidery but it seemed like this took longer than it ought to have. I could do about four full lines in an hour. Believe me, I caught up with both seasons of Downton Abbey working on this thing. Part of the reason is that unlike cross stitching or embroidering on cloth you can’t go around stabbing your needle in all willy-nilly. You have to find the designated hole and slip the needle in. Come at it at an angle and your needle dives into plastic and you have to try again. Precision takes time.

Watch out for your tied off knots on the back. One of my sides was so full of bulging knots that now the case doesn’t fully “hug” the phone on the left side and I find myself constantly trying to push it down correctly.

Also, my now purple hair has rubbed off onto the white plastic staining it slightly. But don’t think that just because you’ve got nice normal hair that you’re exempt. I’ve had cases like this before so I should have known better that to buy the white but anything that is on your hands or face will get on the phone case and dingy it up – makeup, ink on your fingers, hand dirt, dye from your jeans pocket. I’ve even had lining fabric from a new purse rub off on cases before. You might have better luck with the black or blue but eventually that plastic will discolor.

What’s cool about these cases is that if you get bored you could rip everything off and start again. With so much use the threads are bound to get dirty over time. But since this design took me ages to do I think I’ll keep it for awhile.