iPod and iTunes Hacks

Craft an iPod Case from Cardboard

Make your own custom iPod case out of cardboard for next to nothing.

You’ve eyed them in the Apple Store, online, and in various other computer stores. Yet none of the commercially available iPod cases that you have seen manages to substitute individuality for the coolness of the raw iPod in the necessary ratio to warrant its purchase. You want something to protect your cool, sleek iPod, but you also want something that maintains the coolness factor and makes your iPod definitively yours.

Aside from marring the surface of the iPod itself with an engraved quotation (and thereby limiting the resell value of your iPod when Apple comes out with that new 200 GB Video iPod that you have been dreaming of upgrading to) and encasing it in one of the available see-through cases, the only option left within easy reach is to design and make your own iPod case. This hack walks the do-it-yourselfers through the necessary steps to make your own iPod case out of cardboard.

Why Cardboard?

The short answer is, “Why not cardboard?”

The longer reply is that cardboard is a good choice for a do-it-yourself iPod case for many of the same reasons that make it one of the most common forms of packaging. It’s cheap, strong, impact-resistant, easily replaceable, and bendable, and although it can be rigid, it still has some give. But perhaps the most important reason is that you ...