Felt Case for Dingoo Digital A320

Don't be too harsh because this is my very first Instructable. I wanted a simple & cool looking case for a Dingoo Digital A320 that I'm going to get next month for my birthday. It's a super cool little game thingy, so I wanted to have a game theme. Since i don't have it yet I needed a form that was the right size. I found the measurements and cut it out of a piece of foam, then I realized that it's almost the exact same size as an old nes controller. That made choosing my theme easy & it's even better because i don't have to scale anything :) yay for not having to do math. The math isn't that hard anyways. It should be fairly easy to modify my plans for almost any other device. So i guess, here it is. I hope you like it. :D


Ingredients you will need:
black, red, & gray felt (the gray felt i got was called "easy felt" it was stiffer & easier to work with)
elastic
something to form it around
a sewing needle
thread
scissors
glue gun
something to mark your felt with, i used a ball point pen

Mark out all your measurements on your felt before you cut anything. Measure a few times just to be safe. Even though I don't necessarily follow that wisdom all the time I try to stress it often. I actually measured wrong a few times on this project & would have ended up having to do it over if I hadn't measured again. Once you have all your measurements marked out, cut all the pieces out of your felt.

Take your freshly cut felt & fold it around your form. Whether you actually have a Dingoo or a foam model like I have. This will do two important things, 1: It will make sure that you cut everything correctly. & 2: You will get creases in your felt that will help keep the correct shape later. There are two things i would recommend during this step. I really like the "easy" felt for this. It was stiffer so it kept it's shape & it was also easy to crease & fold. The other thing is my foam model. If I already had my Dingoo I'm sure I would have used that, but the foam Dingoo is better because you can stick pins in it & it will keep everything the correct shape.

Once you are satisfied with the way everything fits you can start stitching it up. I started with the corners of the upright pieces. You could start with the back I just thought it would be less hassle this way. After you do both the back & the corners you can sew in the elastic. Don't do it too tight or it will collapse your corners in & they will slip off the form. If you don't know how to sew just do a quick search. You are already in probably the best place in all of the interwebs to start learning. My stitching isn't very pretty but it's functional. You can definitely tell the difference between what I did & what my assistant (little sister) did. I guess I need a sewing machine :P



p.s. be careful with needles kids. I somehow managed to jab myself 5ish times. So unless you can sew better than I can, & you can stitch yourself back up, just be careful with anything pointy.

Now that you're done sewing you have a boring gray felt box. If you just want protection then I guess that's ok, but I wanted something that looked super bamf also. At this point of utter boringness I cut out the pieces for the decorations. I didn't really measure anything, I just eyeballed most of it. In hindsight I would really recommend measuring all these pieces out. Mine didn't come out nearly as good as I had hoped. I also think it might have been better done with a needle or sewing machine. I used my hot glue gun to attach all the face pieces & also the little strap/tab thing that keeps it closed.





p.s. Kids, also be careful with the hot glue gun. Especially if it is a high melt glue gun like mine is. I also managed to burn myself pretty good a few times : )

The last & final step is to rock out with your dingoo, or gameboy, or book, or ipod, or whatever you decided to make a case for. Hope you liked the ible, let me know if there is any way I can improve it & i'll do my best to make it better.