Nexus Cases

So I usually customise all my stuff.. almost immediately.. or atleast within a month.
heres a recap - Laptop1 , laptop2, motorcycle1, motorcycle2, helmet, tablet and so on..

So it was quite obvious that i had to customise the new phone as well. My previous phone just had an instructables.com sticker on it.. and since i had one lying around i slapped it onto the nexus as well... pretty much on day1 infact..

then i got a little fedup of how bright and white it is.. and it was also a bit slippery.. 
so a few days ago i cut a bit of vinyl from a larger sticker i had printed for my tablet.. 

This was designed for the back of my old Acer tab a500

i had a spare.. so cut out a small piece and voila!

This skin while being glossy to look at actually isnt slippery.. and provides almost the same traction as the velvety rubberised finish of the nexus. it also conforms to the curved back pretty nicely! 
So this stays for now.. until i print something else on vinyl.

STICKER UPDATE(2 weeks later):
The sticker fades fast heres what it looked like today(almost 2 weeks later) 

Stuck it to a cupboard after peeling it off the phone 

Peeling it off was remarkably unmessy! no glue residue on the phone at all.. so vinyl is definitely the way to go.. 

anyway i had more of that old print lying around, so i cut out a bigger piece for the whole phone.. heres my handiwork..

I know the cutout is a bit wonky.. but hell this is only going to last a couple of weeks anyway

The Cases
I've tried out two cases so far.. the first one i ordered at around the same time that i ordered the nexus, and it arrived a few days later..

The Spigen Ultra Hybrid (available here)
Its a robust rubber rim with a transparent polycarbonate back.. so i can place my own artwork as cutouts(was easy to find the template online) 

Here with a 3d render of a Puch 250 SGS i modelled in Blender

The other cutouts i made.. two other printouts of my renders and two are hand painted.

The only issue i had with this case is that its actually quite bulky.. very hardcore utilitarian infact.. so i've decided to use it when i go Paint balling or trekking or something. 

My next case was a custom one. I was locked out of the studio one morning and spent an hour waiting for the keys.. during that time i was chatting with the design student next door Shaan Suleman and he showed me this custom phone case he'd made for a client.. he told me about the site he used and i was totally sold on it! 

So a few days later i logged in at www.printstop.co.in and designed my own case.. using the Mech Ascension artwork i'd created for a tshirt a while back.. i modified it a bit and gave it a black vignette so that it would blend with the rest of the case(i had the option of white or black for the case). The prices vary with the case/model/phone and they give you some discount codes when you register on the site.

Heres the design i uploaded to the site.. 

and heres the final case that arrived in the mail..

My camera can't focus on it.. but that teeny tiny text is fairly crisp and readable.

Its nice and slick.. especially around the buttons..

It has a matte finish thats almost the same as the Nexus' hinish, so am glad about that. 

So this should be my daily use case for a while.. lets see.. i still like the caseless feel of my phone.

UPDATE:
Going caseless is definitely not good advice.. as i learned the hard way!
read about my misadventures here - 
http://chaitanyakrishnan.blogspot.in/2014/09/adventures-with-broken-screen.html