Project Blog

I’ve really been saturating the blog with ear-bud wrap posts lately. This should be the last one for a while. I decided to order some laser-cut copies of the earbud-wrap business card. They were a bit expensive, but I’ve been wanting to laser-cut something for some time. I went with 2-color acrylic, and I think they turned out really well.

I made one last (for now) modification to my Credit Card Earbud Holder. The wrap now ends with an over-pass that really locks everything in place. As before, it’s insanely easy to remove the wrap.

The other thing I realized is that, if laser cut from thin plastic, this would make a really neat business card. I don’t really feel like paying for a laser-cut version at the moment, so I just printed out a shipping label to illustrate. If you DO feel like laser cutting this bad boy, I’ve uploaded the plans to Thingiverse. (The plans will also help you if you just want to make one out of an old card)

UPDATE: I got some of these laser cut. They look amazing.

Yesterday on Lifehacker they posted a forehead-smack idea. Take a credit card, cut it up a bit. You’re left with a free, light, earbud holder. I’ve got a bunch of old cards lying around, so I made one.

I Didn’t like it. My design grievances:

• You wrap in the short direction, which means more wrapping to get the job done
• Having the earbuds stored on either side means you need to put in each bud individually
• It takes just as long to unwrap as it does to wrap

It needed some work to compete with my current method. The beauty of using cards is that they’re easy to work with and plentiful (in my house at least.) It only took about an hour (7-10 iterations) to settle on a winner. Meet my new earbud holder:

• The earbud slots are wide and next to eachother, so you can get the buds in quickly with one motion
• You wrap the long way, so you’re done in half the time
• The way the plug is clipped ensures that the wrap stays put, but…
• Because the wrap isn’t in channels, it slides right off once the plug is detached. WAY faster.

UPDATE: I went through a few more iterations and came up with an improved design.