The other day I was looking at laptop skins and thinking about getting one but didn't really want to spend the money on one so I decided to try and make my own. It turned out pretty well.
I decided to create my own design in Photoshop. I love anything that has the World War II poster Keep Calm and Carry On on it and I'm a bit addicted to The Game of Thrones (both show and books) right now so I made my own mix of the two.
I used a template that I downloaded at Sticker Mule that didn't really work for me in the long run but I'll get to that. It still helped just to get the general look and size of the image. I then saved my image and printed it on my home printer. I used matte photo paper but you could use regular printer paper too. The photo paper is thicker and does give it a bit of a raise on the edge when you stick it on the laptop, so that's something to think about if it's going to bother you.
Now the reason the template didn't really work is because it's bigger than a regular 8x10 piece of paper. If you use an A4 sheet it might work better but I just centered my image in the print preview and it worked just fine. It would only be a problem if you had an image you wanted all of. After printing I grabbed my other supplies.
Supplies:
1. Printed Image
2. Clear Contact Paper
3. Sharpie
4. Scissors
5. Paper cutter (optional)
I cut the edges off of the image with my Xacto paper cutter just to be sure I had straight edges and went to work on the contact paper. I did a rough measure of my laptop lid basing it on where the curve starts. I have a 13 inch macBook and my measurements ended up being 12 inches by 8 1/4 inches. The great thing about contact paper is that is has meausurements on the back. So I counted and marked the lines with the Sharpie.
Then I cut the whole thing out. I then laid the contact paper down sticky side up and very slowly and carefully laid the image in the center. I can't stress how important it is to do this slowly as you can't lift the image back up. Paper is one thing contact paper won't peel off of. So just take you time and breathe. :)
The above picture is what it looks like with the image and the Contact paper together. Then you simply line up the Contact paper with the top of your laptop and press. I used the flad edge of my ruler to slide the paper down and make sure there were no bubbles and it was clear.
It really was pretty simple and took maybe 10 minutes after I finished making the image. Please feel free to ask any questions, I never know if I'm being clear and specific enough.
Also, I may write something up on how to make my necklace but I haven't decided on that yet.
Love this idea! I bet you could also do something similar with scrapbook pages. Maybe I'll do something like this for my next skin.
Oh and btw thanks for visiting my blog, loved your idea as well :)
Posted by: Domestic Diva | 07/26/2011 at 10:00 PM