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Her name is Allison, otherwise known as Auntie A or just plain ol’ “A” for short. She likes to craft a lot and has taken up her own space on the internet to share her projects. She blogs about her loves and obsessions. If she doesn't love it, she leaves it.
I absolutely love cats. Whether they be the real fluffy deal or an object created in the image of a cat, I'm going to be absolutely in love with it. So when I was tasked with creating a smart phone holder out of wood it seemed only natural that it would take the shape of one of my favorite animals, the kitty cat.
Now I'll be the first to admit that this isn't a quickie craft. As you can probably tell from the ever changing backgrounds of the process photos for this tutorial creating your own wooden cat smart phone holder will span across a few days. Now you won't be working 24 hours a day for 3 days, by any means, but in order to allow The Ultimate Adhesive to cure and wood putty to fully set we need to give our project time to sit and set.
While it might seem daunting, this is my very first experience using a jigsaw, and I have to say, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I had imagined. If this is also your first turn with the tool I'd highly recommend watching YouTube videos to get comfortable with how the tool works, preparing your wood for cutting and all of that good stuff. I'd also suggest definitely working with a thicker plywood as the thinner stuff shakes and shimmies making it more difficult to control the tool and get a nice, smooth cut. Also remember that with a little bit of elbow grease and sandpaper an imperfect shape might be turned into something perfectly good, so don't toss your cut without giving it a bit of time with the sandpaper to see if it actually is a viable piece for the project.
Print your free pattern (yours looks a little bit different than mine) and cut out the body of your cat using a jigsaw and decent quality plywood. The tail acts as a stabilizer for the stand and the image in the pattern is just a guide that will have to be modified to the body of your cat.
Also, I created this pattern to go with my iPhone 6s in a Speck Hard Candy case. It is quite possible that your phone might be larger or thicker requiring modification to the size of the holder's body or the width of the lip. You'll need to allow your phone enough room on the lip to sit at a slight angle so it will remain on the stand easily. If your phone tries to sit straight up and down, you'll have it tipping forward regularly and not staying put which is no good. Print the pattern and, if necessary, modify it to fit the specifications of your phone WITH your case as this can lead to a great deal of variation.
Cut your wood dowels to fit the width of your cat's body. The body of my cat was 3.75" on the money but, after much practice no 2 of my body shapes were exactly the same, so yours might be slightly different requiring the need to measure and cut accordingly. These pieces will form the lip of your holder where the phone will rest.
Creating a project and tutorial, for me, can be kind of a learning process for me. You can see above that my divot for the phone's charging cord just barely reaches over half of the dowel and I wound up having to go back and fix this which was such a pain. You want to get this area as close to the bottom as possible without compromising the strength of the piece, NOT as shallow as mine is.
Now this area might be jagged from drilling and boring the space out. Sandpaper is difficult to get in the area so we're going to instead smooth out the area with wood putty. Place a small dab of putty inside of the hole and use your finger to smear it around the shape. Use slightly damp fingers to smooth the putty for a nice finish.
Once your lip is well set apply a small amount of adhesive to the front, bottom of your body piece taking care to spread the glue almost to the edges and near the hole for your cord for a tight, secure fit.