D.I.Y iPhone Case
September 2019 and I was due a phone upgrade. The iPhone 11 was due out very soon but, me being me, I couldn’t possibly wait any longer. A few close friends had given great reviews of the iPhone XR, and I jumped right in. For me, getting a new case is far more exciting than getting the phone itself. So, waiting impatiently for my new phone to be delivered, I decided to do some research into which cases were around for my new addition. I soon realised, however, that I had made a mistake. There were so few phone cases available for the iPhone XR…………… So I decided to create my own D.I.Y phone case.
This is what I used to create the phone case:
a phone case (this one was from Accessorize and was only £2.70 in the sale, whoop whoop!)
a selection of PC-3M Posca pens
Montana Gold acrylic spray paint colour G3130 Pink Pink (I got this from www.graff-city.com for £4.40 + delivery)
a scalpel
a cutting mat
scissors
a pencil
a few sheets of paper
water based varnish (I went for Ghiant H20 Water Based Matte Varnish)
First of all, I did some googling for different typefaces I liked and then made a stencil using the font I had created. I came up with the kind of look I wanted, I went for a Fresh Prince/90s/graffiti style as I thought it would work amazingly with the colours of the Posca pens I had. Before I did anything too permanent I did a mock-up to see how the colours and font worked together and played around with the overall design.
Then came the spraying of the case. I went for G3130 Pink Pink by Montana Gold, which is an acrylic spray paint. I did a lot of research into where you can get these from and www.graff-city.com was the cheapest and did the WHOLE colour selection. Believe me it took me a LOOOOOOOOOONG time to decide on the right shade of pink, being the indecisive person I am. I decided to go for Pink Pink because firstly I loved the colour and it worked well with the overall look I was going for. With the dalmatian print on the phone case I had, I found it took quite a few coats to cover. A few light coats covered the dark spots pretty well.
I left the case to dry indoors overnight and then started drawing the design on to the BEAUTIFULLY painted case. To make this as easy as possible I placed the stencil on the case and drew around it, using an HB pencil with each letter slightly underlapping the previous letter.
Once I was happy with the layout I took the plunge and started colouring in the letters. I found going from left to right (because I am right handed) avoided any smudging and waiting a few minutes before moving on to the next letter worked best because they can bleed into each other and it makes a little bit of a mess. The letters looked like they needed another coat but I would advise not to because the colour eventually evened out nicely once it has completely dried. Once each letter was dry I then used the white to highlight them, and the black pen to outline the design using an even thicker line around the whole of the outside of the design.
For the stars in the design, I used a yellow glitter PC-3M Posca pen to mix up the textures. This colour took a few coats to evenly cover the space.
Once the entire design is finished and you have let it completely dry, now is the time to protect your work with a water-based varnish. I went for the Ghiant H20 Water Based Satin Varnish. It is important that you use a water-based varnish as the Posca pens are water-based and if you were to spray them with a harsh chemical the ink would either bubble up or disolve………. I used the spray varnish by holding the can around 30cm from the surface of the phone case and coated it using thin coats.
Then VOILÀ, the case is complete!