Personalized Phone Case

Last Fall, Mr. Suzerspace and I upgraded our phones. Right away, we needed safe places to store them. And just as urgent was a protective case.

As luck would have it, even though we browsed the aisles separately, we both chose the same case for our phones. We laughed about how couples become more similar as they age, and then decided we both had made the best decision and bought them.

As time has gone by, it’s been an entertaining but frustrating experience to pick up the wrong phone, over and over and over.

So I decided to  “mod” mine. Does anyone say that anymore?

I didn’t want anything flashy. Just something that would let me see the difference before flipping it over.

To create this little sticker, I measured the center spot on my case and then opened up Silhouette Studio. I drew a circle a little smaller than that size, and then a second circle inside it, a little smaller yet. The difference between the two circles would create my border. And then, in my favorite font, I created an “S”. I then centered everything.

To cut this design, the “Vinyl, Glossy” setting in the “Send” menu needs to be adjusted to a slower speed. That’s because this is a small sticker, and my favorite font has little serifs (the pointy parts at the end of the letters). This feature of that font causes me all sorts of crafting challenges, but I’m not easily swayed (as in, I am very stubbornly attached to that typeface).

You’ll see in the photo I also put a little rectangle around my design – that helps me weed the vinyl after it has been cut. If you pull that rectangle off first, you get a nice safe clear space to weed the rest of the little bits. If you are super careful when you weed, you’ll end up with a bonus sticker – the reversed out part that isn’t needed for this project. I’m saving it for later.

Once the sticker was weeded, I used transfer tape to collect all the parts. I like transfer tape that has a grid line on it to help me line up the sticker before I rub it down.

I took my phone out of the case so I could be pretty aggressive with the rubbing. And once finished, I had a subtle tone-on-tone decoration for my case.

Mr. Suzerspace liked it so much, he had me make something for his as well. He went with the logo from his Alma Matter. That design has some copyright issues so I’ll leave you on your own to design something like that.