We’re taking a break from the food posts this week and doing a DIY! (:

To be honest, I’ve had this planned out for awhile now. In my head, that is.

Soon after I got my spankin’ new smartphone, I purchased an inexpensive transparent plastic phone cover from one of the shops along the street with grand plans to turn it into a DIY.

So several months later, I finally got round to doing it. I mean, you need to save these kinda things for summer break, right? (But now that summer break is over and summer school is underway, I’m actually getting around to blogging about it. It’s one of those things, you know.)

But my procrastination aside, my guesstimate tells me that including the printing and cutting, this DIY took less than hour from start to finish. Super simple. Which I totally love.

Supplies:

• Plastic transparent phone cover
• Patterned paper
• Cutting mat
• Pen knife
• Scissors
• This template
• Pencil + eraser
• Inks + embellishments

I started by printing this template from Google images. I opened the image in Powerpoint, resized and test-printed it a couple of times before getting a size that fit the cover. (I’m sure there’s a less trial-and-error method to get this done, but this method worked for the non-techy girl.) The size that I eventually settled on was 14.4cm by 9.08cm. Then I cut out the template and measured it against the cover to ensure that everything was fitting right. Just a note: I printed the template on regular printing paper, but I would recommend printing on thicker paper like cardstock so it is easier to trace later on.

I have plenty of 6×6 paper pads so I picked my favorite patterns and simply traced and cut them out. I used Dear Lizzy’s older Neapolitan and 5th and Frolic collections. The turquoise paper from 5th and Frolic is a little thicker than the Neapolitan ice-cream cones patterned paper, so it was a little harder getting that into the case. Learning from this, I would definitely pick paper that isn’t too stiff, which would affect the fit of the paper in the case.

For the ice-cream cones, I stamped a sentiment from Amy Tangerine’s Sketchbook clear stamps with Hero Arts neon pink ink, and inked the edges with Versacolor’s mint. For the other turquoise one, I simply included a sticker from Dear Lizzy’s Neapolitan accent and phrase sticker book.

As a girl who loves variety, I love that I can exchange the patterns whenever I feel like it and have endless options to choose from. This is definitely one way to enjoy all the patterned papers I love on a daily basis.

4 down, 17 to go.

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21 DIY projects are part of my 21 list, a list of 21 things I’m working to accomplish during my twenty-first year. Check out my other 21 DIYs here.