Bling My Flip Phone (part 2 of 3)

You can find 'Bling My Flip Phone (part 1 of 3)' here
and 'Bling My Flip Phone (part 3 of 3)' here.

Hello!

In this second part, I will show you pictures of the evolution of my phone getting a new look.
This article will be separated in four short parts since I bought the furnitures one day, did two big center pieces another day, did the bottom of the phone in two days, and just finished the upper part today (and also did some modifications to parts that were already done). It will be long, and there will be lots of useless details, so I do not expect you to read it all lol.
I just think it's cool to show the progression, and it kinda gives me a reminder of what to do/not to do..
Also maybe it can give you ideas if you want to decorate your stuffs!

Day 1: Buying deco

Just before starting, just thought I could show you the decorations I already had and bought.

What I found in my room:

What I bought:

Before, I would only buy a couple of gems and pearls, but this time, after looking at pictures on the net, I thought it was necessary to buy a huge variety of decorations all sizes to make the phone look prettier.

Since I did not have that much deco to start with, I bought so many things. At least I can use them more than once..

Some of them were quite expensive. T_T Like the bracelets at $10, but I absolutely needed the little jewels because it just gives such a nice shiny look. And thinking back, I do not regret paying the price for the quality (compared to the cheap gems on the far left, these are the ones I used to always buy..!)

I could have ordered everything for cheaper and maybe even better quality on eBay or Amazon, but I was too impatient to start blinging and did not want to wait for the shipping..

Anyway, I will probably next time because I saw many cute decorations I could not find in the stores.

Then, I started to remove the little jewels and pearls from their sticky sheets.

This was longer to do than I thought it would take...

After unsticking the last set of gems, I was so bored (I had started after supper) I did not even started blinging my phone like I had planned to... I just went to bed eh.

Day 2: Starting blinging (heart and bow)

I couldn't wait to start doing more concrete stuff, and actually do use of what I had been fed up doing the day before = unsticking gem off their sticky film.

I had seen on Youtube a video about decorating a phone case, and the girl was doing a plan before... so I thought I should do one too! But actually, mine ended up not very well-planned.

Well, I did the heart AND the bow, which is kind of a start. But after, I just started sticking them on the phone without continuing the plan. I just couldn't imagine continuing to put gems and stuffs on the sheet without these two pieces being stuck. And I was not really inspired by my plan (maybe it's better to make one while you already have an idea of what you are making... which was not the case at all for me).

Hm, the heart looks a lil bit less lean than the previous pic, but it was impossible to do the same heart on the phone as on the plan. I had to put in a pearl heart because I was too tired of trying to fix the jewels so the heart would be symmetrical. And I had to concede hiding a bit of the clock on its right. Oh well.

Really, shaping that thing was so heart (heart, hard... ha!). But it was definitely worth it. I was really proud after.

As you can see, the bow has some white in and a bit around it (I stuck the bow first before making the heart). Well, that's because when I stuck the bow, I thought it was not well placed, so I removed it and re-stuck it two times. Sadly, the glue (a different one than the E6000 one I would also use later) had already stained the phone. At that moment, I thought I would again really mess up another blinging attempt.

Added a little more deco, and then my mother persuaded me to stop (which was a really good idea, because I would have probably screwed it from being tired and less concentrated if I had continued to work on it).

I was a bit sad of the slow progression I had made (I had started decorating right after lunch, but had finished after supper). Only this result after a whole afternoon of work?!

But besides being mentally tired, I was still looking forward to continue working on it the day after.

Day 3: Continuing blinging

Sticking gems and pearls to fill in the spaces. Don't have much to say other than that. :)

A bit later, I saw pictures of bling phones with chains on them while looking on the net!

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These immediately inspired me to put chains on mine. It gives the phone so much more bling!

That bow looks even more awesome with the chain around it.

Thanks internet! (and the pictures' owners) 8D

And then, I kinda got dry of ideas for the top.. had no idea what I should do, so I decided to call it a day before screwing things up. Sticking these by the way took me an afternoon.

Well, actually, I'm lying. I did have an idea, but I had no idea how to do it, and if I was going to do it. When I discovered that chains made the phone look much snazzier, it all became about putting chains on my phone, like this picture (hanging chains on the bottom):

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As for my phone, I thought about putting part of a keychain on the upper part. I imagined it would look spiffy and I needed something big on the upper part to balance the chained bow.

At the same time, that is when I realized that transparent gems did not look that good on my phone. This always happened before, but I still hadn't learnt my lesson yet.. I actually thought that with some new glue (E6000) and gems (though not all) bought at Michaels (which I thought were maybe better quality but nope), the effect would be prettier than the one on previous attempts.

Sadly I did not snap a close-up of the transparent gems to show you the effect, but I am sure you have already seen it before anyway. It becomes kind of fuzzy (like it loses its shininess a while after being stuck on?) Also, the gem becomes opaque and not shiny anymore the minute you accidentally put a little glue on..

Therefore, putting a big chain with charms hanging down seemed perfect for me to hide all the imperfections of the transparent gems that I would have to stick on the next day (I could not put only pearls still).

So I took some of the charms and chain on the necklace I had bought from Claire's (the one which had the pink bow), did some modifications, changed charms, shortened the chain, changed charms again, and then got tired (that was the moment I called it quits). However, I was still quite proud of the work done on my phone that day and how it looked.

Day 4: Starting the upper part

I am making progress.

Started early in the morning because that keychain issue was bugging me. After a good moment of trying to figure out how I could do something satisfying, I removed two charms, put a new one (the pink heart), and shortened the chain. I put a pink flower with the chain attached to it. It does not really look like the hanging keychain idea I had in mind at the beginning, but I am so glad I actually took this idea instead of the first one. I don't have pictures showing my old idea, but I swear it was not great and would have looked so complicated to do (the chain was supposed to move freely, be longer and kind of in diagonal starting from the phone strap hole on the left side and going a bit down where the other extremity of the chain would be stuck on the phone (which is weird because I do not think the extremity would have stayed stuck on). And the charms were hiding a part of the upper heart which did not look good at all, and I realized that when flipping my phone open, the chain would move down and be noisy..

Also, I had tried to put a chain ring in the phone strap hole, but kinda screwed the strap hole (because it was so tight, the chain ring could not move and it was ugly, but when I tried to remove it, it did not want to, so the strap hole is all damaged because of the pliers squeezing the chain ring to get out).

So that is why I do not regret giving up the keychain idea (even though that meant not hiding the ugly transparent gems).

The idea before sticking the three pieces

After sticking them (and adding other things like the pink ice cream)

I actually forgot the gold heart was supposed to be a bit lower,

so the chain would make a hanging effect, but it's ok~

Now I needed to fill in the spot with gems... but this time, I put some more pearls than usual, and found the result to be prettier than what I would have imagined and very girly-like.

So I ditched the transparent gems, and just continued on with pearls and bracelet rhinestones (they shine a lot it's amazing).

Unfortunately for the bottom part of my phone, the transparent gems seemed already well-stuck, so I thought it was impossible to remove them and start over. T_T

Also, my mom cut for me a pearl in half (it was actually supposed to be a charm in my first keychain idea) so I could put it on the phone! I feel the cutting job was really hard to do (and dangerous a bit) so I'm really thankful because I wanted that pearl cut in half so badly..!!)

As you can see on the bottom part, I gradually added more and more

pearls and bracelet rhinestones to hide the bad transparent gems.

It really does improve the look of the bottom part.

Was my phone done at that moment?

...

Yes, I removed a big chunk of the bottom part...

It all started when I thought putting a chain right above the bracelet gems would make my phone more blingy and prettier. But because of the big pearl right under the left bow tail, the chain was not leveled. It was going up and down (also because I had stuck other pearls on top of transparent gems earlier). It looked weird.

So I decided to attempt removing that big pearl. If I was going to succeed, it was so worth it.

And after succeeding to remove the pearl, it finally encouraged me to remove the transparent gems I really did not like (at the same time, I stuck the pink ice cream cone directly on the phone instead of leaving it resting on the gems, so it looked MUCH better from profile after).

^O^

Maybe you don't see a big difference (especially because the whole line of transparent gems is still there), but just right above, I changed pearls, put more pearls, put bracelet stones, removed a lot of superposed gems, etc.

I thought I would leave the line of transparent gems there because I would be putting anyway a chain over it, and the chain would be hiding all of the imperfections perfectly.

I believe that lighting makes my phone look 10 times cuter

But looking at it more, I found that if I put the chain, it looked a lil bit too yellow/gold on the bottom part, so it was out of balance. So I tried putting a whole row of white little pearls, but was still not satisfied. Then tried a whole row of bracelet gems, but not better. Finally, tried alternating pearl-bracelet gems, but it was worse.

So now I guess I am stuck here. As I am writing this, I still haven't found an idea. Well, thinking about it, maybe I should try a silver chain?

After looking at the picture, I found flaws. No!

1. random small pearl that got stuck (there was no glue on fortunately!)

2. bracelet gem that fell off

3. a stain on the pink gem that I figured the chain or whatever over would not hide.

Ok so after solving these little mistakes, this is how the phone looks like.

So now, what is left to do are the inside of the 'heart contour screen' (fill in some gems to cover left and right borders), and the line at the bottom of the phone which leaves me undecided..
For the inside of the heart, I think that tiny transparent silver gems would look nice, but if only they could keep shining once put on... I am stuck with pearls again, and even though I am really satisfied of how they look like, I think silver gems would look better. I will think about this.

I will continue updating my journey in the last part, but for now, I will end this article here.

Byebye!

Bling My Flip Phone (Intro - Part 1 of 3)

You can see 'Bling My Flip Phone (Part 2 of 3)' here

and 'Bling My Flip Phone (Part 3 of 3)' here.

HELLO!

A couple of days ago, I decided to make my flip phone (clamshell cellphone) a lil bit flashier~

My phone is a pink LG DLite GD570:

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I bought this phone in 2011 as my first cellphone, and besides a few bugs here and there, I really cannot complain about the quality of the product. I bought it because I had seen a similar phone called the LG Lollipop sold in South Korea, and I thought the phone looked so cute and it was impossible for me to imagine owning a phone like this in Canada, and also I was crazy about South Korea lol.

So yeah, this summer, I started to get tired of this flip phone.

Since my phone is not on a contract anymore (I mean, it was a pre-paid phone that has been fully paid now), I could have easily bought another one. But I got a bad experience with android smartphones last summer, so since then, I promised myself to stick with my LG flip phone until I would buy an iPhone.. :'D (but that will not be anytime soon since I prefer to buy an iTouch and keep a flip phone for calls + text messages).

So I thought about pimping my LG to make it cuter to look at and less boring.

My inspiration was japanese decoden phones. I don't know if the bling phone trend started in Japan, but I initially heard of japanese phones when I first discovered you could put such extravagant decorations on your phone. That was back in 2011.

At that time, I was not really interested by overdecorated phones.. I remember falling in love with a cute Hello Kitty handmade case on Etsy. But since the case was for an iPhone (and I had an iPod touch), I could not buy it.

I guess this is wrong, but since I couldn't get it, I just decided to copy the design on my own case.. (for personal purpose only though) XD

But anyway, very average crafting skillz, short patience, and only one afternoon to do it resulted in a case that turned out really bad.

I believe the phone case on Etsy is no longer there, but I swear it looked better than this.

This case is not a success, because the Hello Kitty is shifting on the left, the bow is made out of random gems which somes are pink, there are random pink gems in the red background, some gems awkwardly superposed on each other, and a thick coat of mud pudge covers this mess. I thought that mud pudge would make the gems look shiny, but it did not do much (the gems look much shinier on the pic than in real life))..

On a positive note, I do think the Hello Kitty itself is really not bad at all (even though no nose), considering I was going freestyle on sticking the gems.

I after attempted to bling other things such as my iPod nano's (2nd gen) case (which was another fail and I cannot even find the case anymore..), a USB key (not a bad result since it was only sticking silver gems in lines -a no brainer job, but a lot of them fell out), mascara tubes (huge fail)), etc. Sadly, once it had been blinged, I hated it even more instead of liking it.

Ok let's get back to the flip phone. Actually, even though I was tired of it, I guess it was just its appeareance I was bored to look at. I mean, I still liked the keyboard, cute interior design, and it still worked really good. Also, I could not imagine buying another phone at the moment... if I had bought another one, I knew everything that had happened last summer would happen again this summer: nothing working, being indecisive, returning everything, and losing money at the end. :(

Moreover, I feel sometimes ~special~ to own a flip phone in a place where smartphones are everything. I do feel like I am standing out of the crowd sometimes -while I am perfectly conscious this does not make me any better/prettier/more awesome. Bragging about owning a flip phone would truly be a strange thing. And anyway, I am in some kind of way part of that 'smartphone wave' because I own an iPod Touch (which is, in my opinion, almost like a smartphone but just cannot make calls and have 3G/4G).

So when I took the decision to bling something that was quite important for me and that had stuck with me for a relatively long time (not 30 years but still 4 years which is decent), I thought I should improve on my crafting skillz and pimp my LG DLite to another level, in the way it deserved to be pimped.

I wanted to make my phone girly, pink, with a lot of shiny things, and super blingy (I said I used to find bling phones way too overblinged, but not anymore now). To be honest I wanted it attention-grabbing to the max LOL.

Here are the inspirations I got on the internet, just decoden phones/electronic devices I thought were lovely:

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Even though it is not pink, I love how the colors look together.

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Not really my style, but I thought the drop gems
with the little gems above gave a really cool raindrop effect.

Forgot where I took it..
If someone has the link, feel free to tell me. :)

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Of course, I had to put Xiaxue's designs here! Very well-made.
Picture below is also by her.

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I also went on the website Lux Addiction to see their bling phone cases. They look great!

Here are 'screen contour' ideas since I have a light on the front of my phone that I did want to keep showing.

After seeing some of these pics, I was inspired to do a heart contour made out of rhinestones for my screen too. :P

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I just love how they put gems inside the heart on each border so it
covers a bit of the non-screen part. If I cannot make a heart that perfectly
fits my screen without leaving weird plain borders, I might also do this. x)

By the way, as I am writing this, I have already started to bling my LG.
I finished the bottom part on the second day I started blinging the phone, now what is left to do is the top part.. it's kinda hard since I am thinking of something but I don't know how to make it work and if it would look pretty.

I shall write my experience in making the bottom part in the next post since this one is getting pretty long. I hope I will not be too lazy to write it. ><

Ok, byebye!

Pimp mon clavier

Bonjour!

Ce midi, j'ai reçu un paquet de la factrice~

Des autocollants de clavier d'ordinateur!!

Pour mettre en contexte, mes autocollants d'ordinateur commençaient à m'ennuyer un peu (ils étaient là depuis novembre 2012), donc j'ai décidé d'aller sur eBay m'en acheter un nouveau set au début juillet.
Je trouvais que ce set était joyeux, coloré et pas cher (même s'il était moins unique que celui que j'avais à ce moment, car il semble que ce set de stickers soit vendu par plusieurs sur eBay).

Voici mes vieux stickers de clavier:

(ils ont l'air bleu foncé sur la photo, mais ils sont noirs en réalité)

J'ai adoré ces stickers (achetés aussi sur eBay), ils étaient thème Hello Kitty.

Cependant, avec le temps, ils sont devenus poussiéreux (probablement à cause d'un manque d'entretien régulier XD, mais le fait que leur texture soit d'un type mousse-feutrine assez épais n'a pas aidé non plus).

J'ai donc décollé les stickers. Plus facile (mais plus long) que je pensais..

Il y a encore des bouts de collant sur quelques touches mais bon.

Après avoir nettoyé les touches, mon portable était comme neuf.

J'avais presque envie de le laisser tel quel, mais en même temps,

je trouve qu'il fait trop sérieux comme ça.

Le temps est venu de mettre les nouveaux stickers. :D

AHHH, problèmes.

Je m'attendais évidemment à ce que les stickers ne soient pas adaptés à mon clavier, comme mes anciens Hello Kitty.

Mais je ne savais pas que je me planterais sur la touche Enter, LA touche la plus grosse sur le clavier.

En fait, le sticker ne fittait pas sur mon bouton, donc j'ai découpé juste le haut (je ne me souviens plus pourquoi) pensant que ça allait être joli.. ah..

Aussi, le bouton Shift a un trop gros espace libre. J'avais arrangé ce problème sur mon clavier Hello Kitty en collant une sorte de « rallonge », mais en essayant ce truc sur ce clavier-ci, c'était tellement laid...

Quoi qu'il en soit, à la toute fin, j'ai décidé de mettre des collants que j'avais déjà dans mes affaires.. grande amélioration par rapport à mes tentatives précédentes.

Il y a encore un gros spot noir sur le bouton Enter, mais c'était trop difficile de trouver un collant qui fittait parfaitement, j'ai donc laissé tomber.

FINI!

Comme mentionné plus tôt, ces stickers ne sont pas faits pour mon clavier, donc leur taille est plus petite que les touches de mon clavier, et on peut voir sur certaines touches des écrits qui dépassent du collant.

Également, j'ai eu à en modifier plusieurs: en couper car trop gros (eg toutes les touches de l'étage du haut), ajouter des « rallonges » à certains car trop courts (eg la barre espace qui a un sticker à chaque extrémité), ou coller un sticker pas rapport sur une touche (eg le Backspace remplacé par un sticker de la compagnie? XD (le vrai sticker avait la taille d'une lettre minuscule et Dieu merci celui de la compagnie avait la longueur parfaite) ou encore la touche FN remplacée par le sticker wake up). Bref, pleins de petits changements.

Mais j'aime beaucoup le résultat, c'est très mignon.

Ah oui, quand ces stickers sont arrivés, j'étais tellement surprise que leur enveloppe soit si petite. J'ai pensé qu'en fait, je m'étais peut-être faite roulée et qu'ils étaient minuscules.

Puis après, j'ai pensé que le vendeur avait bêtement plié le clavier en deux pour qu'il entre dans l'enveloppe, ce qui aurait inévitablement abîmé les stickers.

Mais en les sortant de l'emballage, j'ai été agréablement surprise de voir ça:

En fait, ils ont coupé entre les stickers pour après pouvoir plier la feuille aisément sans l'abîmer.

Ingénieux et très bonne idée (je n'y aurais pas pensé).

Voilà, c'est tout pour cet article.

Je trouve que les stickers de clavier sont une belle manière de décorer l'ordinateur. Les miens sont colorés, mais il y en a des plus sobres aussi, comme mes anciens Hello Kitty.

Au revoir!