Childhood anecdote time: I remember having a Motorola Razr when I was much younger and there was a little part on the flip hinge where you could loop a phone strap through. I used to change my phone charms out a lot, sometimes because I found a new pretty beaded charm that caught my fancy, and others because they matched my obsession at the time. You can still attach these straps to your phone but through the phone case rather than the phone itself, as modern smartphones don’t have this gap anymore.

I also used to collect dust plug charms for any audio jacks in my later phones. I had little charms with cats that would be sleeping across the top of my phone, or things hanging off the phone and falling down the back! Eventually the audio jack disappeared from most phone models too. Guess most people customise their phones through their phone cases now!

Why did I talk about all that before? Well, I finally convinced myself to get a new phone a few weeks ago, as my old phone camera got busted pretty hard and I love taking pictures in general so it was hampering my daily life. I don’t know if you can call if a feature or not, but it actually has an audio jack at the top of the phone. I don’t use plug-in headphones anymore, so I can use dust plugs again!

I keep a box of spare jewellery findings from recycled and discarded bits and bobs, and I already had a dust plug with a pink strap and a bell on it, so I hooked on a small polymer clay paopu fruit (from Kingdom Hearts if you didn’t know!) that I made a very long time ago. It precedes this blog, when I briefly dabbled with polymer clay, so I don’t have any pictures on the process. I could tell you that I made it pretty poorly! Bits of dust got caught when the clay was moulded and baked, but it’s not noticeable unless it’s up close. Anyway, with a secure ring finding, you can hook on any charm you like!

I still wanted to make a new strap, so I specifically ordered a grab bag of phone straps with dust plugs. Each one came with a different strap colour and a lobster clasp. The colour distribution could have been a bit better, but I really only needed one or two.

I also have a mixed stash of TOHO seed beads in various sizes and colours, and fire-polished beads. I purchased so many colours when I was starting out with beaded bracelets, so a couple have gone untouched so far.

Choosing a nice matching colour palette will be the most difficult part of the process, once you’ve sorted that then the rest of the project will go rather smoothly! I used a pink-lined blue seed beads, luster black diamond seed beads, light blue fire-polished beads, and blue/gold AB fire polished beads, to make a strap that was overall a blue colour palette with flecks of other colours. I used beads of different sizes than recommended, but you still get the same effect.

This strap (project featured in the book Beadweaving Brilliance) uses the spiral rope stitch, much like the bracelets I made, and the final strap becomes a loop hanging off the phone strap. You can build the beaded strap as long as you want it to be when hanging on your phone – I made a straight length of about 15cm, doing the same motion over and over again. I used thin nylon thread and a beading needle – the needle is key as I tried using a thicker fishing line-style cord and no needle at first, but it became very difficult when I needed to loop the thread through the central beads multiple times!

To finish the strap, I removed the lobster clasp from the phone strap and replaced it with my own ring finding. Using jewellery pliers did not give the size I needed, so I made a few loops around a paintbrush and clipped the rings off. I thought about how the strap could potentially fall off with a single ring, so I made something like a double ring with a small gap at the top to fit through the holes. I used the light blue cord colour to match the blue palette.

To finished the strap, I made a loop of seed beads on both ends and looped it through the ring, before securing the thread by running it through the beads a few times and adding half-hitch knots in a few places. This strap is not coming off the ring after this, so you better make sure that the strap is fully secure and that the ring won’t fall off the strap!

Visually it looks quite similar to my beaded bracelets, so you’d think that it would be quite heavy on my phone, but I used a lot of small beads in this so it’s actually quite lightweight. I like how it hangs off my phone when I’m using it, but I do have to watch where I put my phone down so that I don’t catch it by accident!

Also the pink-lined blue seed beads are really cute. My phone case is black so you only really see the blue against it, but the colours really pop in the light!

Beading is really quite versatile. I got the idea to do these earrings from a phone strap project too (you can see a picture in the linked post) so I might make another one at some point, if I get more bugle beads in different colours. (I probably shouldn’t be buying more beads, hah!)

Materials used:
– nylon beading thread
– 1.5mm pink-lined blue seed beads
– 3mm luster black diamond seed beads
– 3mm AB blue/gold fire-polished beads
– phone strap and dust plug
– silver wire

Tools used:
– beading needle
– jewellery pliers
– wire cutters