Deco Post - Cell Phone Case Redo

Sorry for the extremely late post, but it turned out that my latest project (which I will be talking about in this post later on and is hinted in the title) took longer than expected ^^;. I haven't done a deco project in such a long time, so I decided on redecorating my phone case. It doesn't help matters that I had finally received the glue that I had bought from eBay (that and my desk is now significantly more cleaner). The urge to deco something went way up after that. 

Now I had named this post as a redo since this wasn't the very first time that I had decorated my phone case. I had actually decorated the case a while back, probably around a year or two. Why did it take this long to redecorate my phone case then? Better yet, why redecorate at all?  Well the first time around, the glue that I used (Clear Gel Tacky Glue) didn't hold down the rhinestones and bigger gems for a long period of time. Actually it didn't hold them down at all. -.- I was so disappointed... So knowing that any attempt to using the phone case will just lead to more fallen rhinestones and gems, I decided to redecorate but couldn't until recently. For one thing, I didn't have any glue other than my epoxy (which I had already used up most of it on my sister's DS lite case). For another thing, I didn't feel like slowly taking off the gems one by one until recently, since that would be very tedious work and we all get our lazy moments. I guess in a way, redecorating my phone case is a way to free up more space, since up until now it had been doing nothing except collecting dust on a shelf ^^;.

Anyway, the total time it took to finish up this project was 3 days. Yup! 3 days! I know that I could've finished this sooner, but with projects like these I am usually slower than the average person and my perfectionist tendencies tend to get a hold of me, since this case was heavily inspired from Luxaddiction and I want it to look almost like the cases on the website. Technically the case was finished in 2 days, but it is 3 days including finishing touches.

I apologize if some of the photos seem a little bit blurry.

Materials used:
- cell phone case (in this case, a Motorola Krzr k1m)
- rhinestones/pearls/bigger gems/etc.
- glue (in this case, Gemtac)
- tweezers
- toothpick for spreading glue   
- scrap paper for covering the table

What I first did was look around some sites for some inspiration, such as Luxaddiction. Youtube videos help too. Sometimes I need some inspiration to start a project such as this one, since like I said earlier, it usually takes me awhile to complete.

I then started gluing the bigger gems randomly on the back case along with the occasional pearl and plastic rose.  Now my case at first wasn't as clean as it was in the picture. It had some glue marks, which I wiped away with a damp paper towel.

More things was added on, such as a few rhinestones, a pearl heart, and another bigger gem to create a layered look like the one found on Luxaddiction. Basically layering of gems and other pieces. 

When the layered look was to my satisfaction, I then started the tedious process of filling up the rest of the black space with rhinestones, 5mm white and light+dark pinks, and 2-3mm purple for the very small spaces left by the bigger rhinestones. 

Once I finished filling up the black space with rhinestones, I then added a gold metal butterfly as well as a big pearl as shown in the picture. The back is almost finished and I will be going back to do some final touches after finishing up the front case. 

I then worked on the bottom front part of the back cover. Basically added two bigger gems, a few pearls, and filled up the rest of the space with rhinestones. 

I then started working on the front case. I did not have any particular direction for this case other than starting at the upper right and making my way downward. For this case I did not add the bigger gems first like I had done with the back case, but rather just add any random thing I see fit as I made my way down, since I didn't really want to leave empty spaces between gems and rhinestones. 

Kept adding and I even managed to throw in a Hello Kitty piece. 

The finished case. I added some final touches such as a clear rhinestone gem on the gold butterfly and the big purple crystal heart. I also added some more tiny rhinestones to fill up some empty space on the corners and the sides. Overall I am pretty happy with it. It met my expectations and looks almost like the Luxaddiction covers (you can tell how badly I wanted the case to look like the ones on the website if I had already mentioned the website name 3 times). I had improved in terms of design, but also "improved" in terms of laziness, since my old design used 2-3mm rhinestones instead of 5mm rhinestones xD. What do you think?