Custom PS Vita Grip

I call this the Tooth Grip hehe

Ah yes, the PS Vita, a handheld console some people call the PS Muerte but even so, I managed to get myself one at a steal price, it was still smooth and barely have any scratches, also my favorite color too. The local Target Mall in my town (Should not be confused with Target Malls in the US) has these stalls selling electronic gadgets. It was a pretty good price that was hard to pass up and the Vita was on a low firmware, which means I can do a lot of things with it.

I bought it and while playing Final Fantasy Type-0 on it, my hands began to hurt a bit which means I would need a grip. Sadly it's hard to get accessories in my place and I couldn't find one that also has a face cover, most of them has the face exposed and I don't want that.

So what to do? Well, since I have a lot of scrap wood lying around, I made the grip myself.

A few scraps, a bit of time, and a bit of ingenuity, I managed to make a very comfortable grip.
Carving up the wood to shape to act as the handle and making wood clay out of wood soot and saw dusts.

I used wood stain and a bit of varnish to finish off the grips.

The grips were attached using wood glue, it is strong enough to stick
to the crystal case but is also easy to remove with force if I wanted to.
Maybe after two years it would pop off on its own without leaving
any residue.

From scraplings to grapplings...
I know it doesn't make sense.

Kind of looked like two canine teeth, it's irregular shape makes it a bit realistic. My brother thought it was a pair of horn. One of the wood was hard to carve up. It has become too old and tensile which makes it hard to carve so as you may notice one of them is slightly thicker than the other one. If I force it, it would break.
I'm very happy with the results, and I didn't spend money on it, except for the brush and lacquer thinner I needed. The rest were sourced from my art studio, I just have them lying around.

I prefer not to be a human so adept in consumption especially on my hobbies. I know it's so easy to buy a grip out there but the earth's resources are finite. I didn't want to import, just imagine the carbon footprint that would incur but people don't think about those things, they just mindlessly devour stuff.
I'd rather make use of the things I have lying around and I also got rid of the stuff, at least somehow.

Next project would be a grip for my New Nintendo 3DS that can be used even with the TPU case and can be attached / detached easily.

New 3DS Face Plates on the Cheap

Fire Emblem Fates Skin on Third Party Face Plate

I recently got my MHX New 3DS bundle from Japan and one of the things I was excited about it was the ability to have interchangeable face plates. Unfortunately, New 3DS face plates don't come cheap, they usually come in prices above $20 and in my country, almost double the price because of importation taxes and nasty sellers taking advantage of its scarcity.


Third Party New 3DS Face Plates and Skins
So when I bought my New 3DS online in Japan, I also bought third party plain colored face plates that come at a fraction of the average price and decided to just get decals or skins on the plate.
So above is a sample of plain black face plate with Fire Emblem Fates skin, the design is not the exact copy of what the original face plate looks like but it is pretty close.

Not bad :) for a skin
The difference between the original was Takumi's location, and
the proximity of Joker and Felicia

The background is also different from the original but all in all it's
a pretty close match. I tried to get a high res photo of all them and this
was the best I could find.

The plates that came with my New 3DS was the MHX plate and it was pretty awesome but I also wanted to give my idea a try so I would probably be using my Fire Emblem Fates plates for now.

The original face plate

I was pretty happy with the results of the decal because I didn't spend a lot of money on it. I saved up a lot and it looks pretty good even with my clear TPU case on.

Below are photos of the plate I bought, in black to match my new 3ds.

One thing I really like about this method is that the designs available are limitless, I can also just paint on the plates if I wanted to. I bought a couple more plates so I would definitely go crazy one of these days and have an awesome one of a kind plate for my New 3DS.