Laptop Art Mods

I'm always looking for ways to make my computer better, whether that might mean functionally or aesthetically. In the area of aesthetics, my laptop used to be fairly generic -- seems like everybody's go an HP Pavilion these days, and mine is indistinguishable from everyone else's.

While custom artwork has long been available for computer casing, it's fairly expensive and involved. Thus, I was compelled to develop my own simple and cheap method to brand my computer with customized art.

My journey began where all great journeys begin: Wal-Mart! There, I picked up some half-length mechanical pencils and a pack of needles. When I got home, I replaced the lead in one of the pencils with a needle. Be sure, if you try this, to get needles that are the right size for the pencils; otherwise you'll run into problems. I now had my modifying tool.

With the needle-pencil, I was able to etch designs into the surface of my laptop. It wasn't difficult, and, aside from being entirely unforgiving, it was basically the same as sketching with a pencil. If you want to try this, you can use another pencil to sketch out what you want before you go at it with the needle. That way, if you make any design errors, they won't be final. Pencil generally just rubs off of laptop casing.

The picture to the left here is a bird I sketched at about an inch-and-a-half square. As you can see, it's fairly easy to get a good level of detail, and shading is also possible.

On the lid of the laptop, I got a friend to draw geometric patterns that were more clear-cut with no shading. These have the added interest of texture, besides just making the computer unique.

Spiderweb

Curves and Lines

Try out this method! Have fun! If you get some cool results, email them to me and I'll feature them in a later post: nstr10[at]gmail.com

Until next time, this is Nestor-10 signing off.