Hobbies and Phone Cases

by Angelina Chung, Art Staff

With winter break, I now have ample time to relax and enjoy my hobbies.

I could be watching TV shows, reading webtoons, making beaded rings, planning to bake cookies and all that fun stuff, but I decided to do something that I have been wanting to do for some time: decorate my phone case. Equipped with the utilitarian, black fabric card pocket on the back, the clear case for my previous phone had served its purpose as a protective holder and a light wallet well, but failed to be anything more interesting. Not that it was required to be any more interesting, although consuming countless cute phone case embellishing videos in both Korean and English inspired me to think otherwise. Then right after all my classes for the semester ended, I ordered a clear case through Amazon. This wasn’t my first attempt at phone-deco; over the summer, I tried oil painting an older case, but it ended up being unusable because paint would rub off onto my hand. Thus, to not have my efforts be wasted in unfortunately covering my palms in Smurf blue again, I chose a clear one that could both protect and showcase what I put in between the back of the phone and the plastic.

This craft took me almost the whole day. Coming up with an overall theme was the hardest part because I wanted to include everything that assisted me through this disappointing year. Also, it didn’t help that I foolishly decided to draw out my own makeshift adornments through Procreate and attach them piece by piece when I could have just cut pieces from an album/magazine or drawn out the whole thing on one digital canvas, “sticker” and all. All of these things, combined with my slow hand, made for a few-hours-long process. Finally, after trashing multiple sketches, I went with the theme of media contents, as in shows and music, that I enjoyed this year as an overarching idea. The background was inspired by the orange and blue sky I saw the other day and the lyrics of a song called “Telepathy”, the printed words were quotes from various TV shows, songs, and webtoons that made this year at least somewhat enjoyable, and the tiger was an allusion to one of my favorite characters. All in all, I was satisfied with my results because, not only was the process of creating the cover itself a fun and peaceful experience, but this case also served as a summary of some of my fondest recollections of 2020 as well as a reminder/journal of my current reflections and mottos.

My first semester at college flew by in a flurry. Near the end, it was even more hectic and rapid flowing, with packing stuff for “The Flip”, coming back home, finishing projects and exams, etc. At times like this, I love to enjoy various crafty hobbies to calm down, spice things up, make me think, and fiddle my hands. Perhaps these hobbies are utterly useless ways to spend time. But no matter how meaningless it may seem or even if it’s actually meaningless, I think one of the things that is most important in life is to let yourself do what you want, at least in the boundaries of harmless hobbies.