Decorating Cell Phones - Charms Covers Crystals or Crochet

Cell phone decorations are no longer just for looks; some would say that these have become a reflection of who you are. You can buy decor for your phone from the vast array of ready-made choices or you can use do-it-yourself methods of decoration for unique personalizing.

Charms in Every Imaginable Theme: One such ready-made choice would be cell phone charms, which are widely available for purchase and, with the array of themes available, can be changed with your every mood, to show your current emotions or to let the world know what your favorite things are.

Peel and Stick: Ready-made peel and stick cell phone decorations are available in a seemingly endless variety of themes, to fit your own interests. You can even get them in words or phrases like "Way to go" or "You are my sunshine".

Decorative Straps: You can even make a fashion statement with the strap of your cell phone, as beautiful straps are available with themes such as butterflies, jeweled poodles or Cinderella's magic shoe.

The strap itself may be woven with a themed design but cell phone straps also often include an attached charm as part of that theme.

Fun Covers: Fabric animal-shaped covers that stretch to fit most bar style cell phones can reflect your love of your pet or show off your favorite animal, insect or amphibian. Sports enthusiasts, you might be happy to know that these come shaped like a football, basketball or other sports equipment too.

Faceplates, Skins: Other types of covers are faceplate covers and phone skins. These can be found in animal prints, many design themes and bright, muted, shiny or most any other type of finish in solid colors.

Cell Phone Decorations For Children: With many children having cell phones of their own, cell phone decoration themes have expanded to images that children can relate to.

Even some Barbie and Ken dolls come with cell phone charms these days. These dolls are manufactured by Mattel, with the Barbie Fashion Fever Dolls, Winter Ken and the Raquelle Doll including a girl's cell phone charm in the package.

Crystals, kits and other supplies are available for you to create your own design that you glue directly to your phone's surface.

All is fun unless you decide to remove decorations from your mobile phone, at which time you might experience the irritation of trying to remove glue residue from the phone surface. As a solution, products have been made with which to coat the phone surface before putting any decorations on it, enabling easy removal later that leaves no leftover residue.

One such product is a resin mix material named Deco Clear

Pattern by Sandi Marshall

Here's a design that I thought up for a quick, easy decoration to crochet for your cell phone. You'll need a hair elastic that is the right size to stretch to fit around your phone.

For the gold thread, I used Aunt Lydia's size 5 Fashion Crochet Thread, color Gold/Gold (Metallic), with a US size D crochet hook.

You only need to know how to make a crocheted chain and how to do a single crochet stitch in order to make this curlique decoration. I have a how-to series that teaches, step by step, how to do both of these stitches, with photos making the steps easy to understand. The single crochet page also teaches about making a single crochet in the second chain from the hook and making more than one single crochet in a same stitch, which are both things you will be doing in making this cell phone curlique charm. You can view these tutorials at the following links:

Leaving a strand of about 7 inches to use for weaving in the strand later,
attach the thread around the hair elastic (I positioned it on the right-hand side edge).

Note: Making multiple stitches in each chain makes the chain lengths curl. When each curlique is made, you might need to hand twist each curlique-chain (twisting in a clockwise direction) to make it go into the best curlique shape. 

First Curlique: chain 13 chains, then make 3 single crochet in the second chain from the hook and 3 single crochet in each remaining chain until you reach the end of this chain length. Next, make a single crochet around the hair elastic.

Second Curlique: chain 17 chains,. then make 3 single crochet in the second chain from the hook and 3 single crochet in each remaining chain until you reach the end of this chain length. Next, make a single crochet around the hair elastic.

If you like the look of just two curliques, you could stop now ... or make this third one:

Third Curlique - (made with only 2 single crochet in each chain, instead of 3, for a looser curlique). Instructions: chain 26 chains, make 2 single crochet in the second chain from the hook and 2 single crochet in each remaining chain until you reach the end of this chain length. Next, make a single crochet around the hair elastic.

End off, leaving a strand of about 7 inches to use for weaving in the end. Thread the strand on a hand sewing needle that has an eye large enough for the thread to fit through. Insert the needle under the stitches that are around the hair elastic (on the inside of the elastic ring, so the weaving in will not show when this decoration is placed on the cell phone). Be sure to have the needle
pointed away from you (not toward you) when you are doing this, as the needle may not push through as easily after a few passes and, when it does give way, well, it's best to have it pointed away from you, for safety's sake. Weave back and forth several times, making an extra knot at some point during each pass, so the end will be secure and should not unravel over time. Then cut the strand close to the last part of the weaving in, so there is no more end strand left unhidden. Repeat the weaving in with the leftover strand of the beginning.

-- End of Pattern Instructions. This pattern is copyrighted by Sandi Marshall and cannot be copied to other web sites, blogs or any other manner of reproduced copy. You may link to this hubpages page, if you would like to. --

The Adventure: With all these ready-made and do-it-yourself choices at your disposal, deciding how you want to decorate a cell phone can be an adventure!

Following are some resources to help you explore some of those choices.

Here's some interesting web pages that I came across. It's fun to see what other people have to say about cell phone decoration and their thoughts on the importance of it. According to the first link below, decorating a cell phone is nearly as important in Japan as it is to own a cell phone.

This article was written by Sandi Marshall and is copyright 2009 by Sandi Marshall. Per copyright law (see the website copyright.gov), do not copy this article to your own web site or blog and do not republish it in any other manner. If you would like others to see it, links to this page are welcome. Thank you for visiting my hubpages!

The following YouTube video was made by an eBay seller (as I discovered in viewing it, near the end of the video). It has value as a step-by-step guide for knowing exactly how to add a peel and stick decoration to your cell phone.