Dog phone holder

One of the things I particularly enjoy doing is making small gifts for friends and family. And if the gift can be both decorative and useful, it makes it even more valuable I think! Phone holders fall into this category for me and I have previously made a cat phone holder for my Mum and an elephant phone holder for my Dad. A friend likes to watch videos while cooking and does a lot of video chatting with friends and family abroad, so I decided to make a personalised phone holder for them. And as they have always wanted a dog as a pet, it was already very apparent what animal this one was going to be!

I looked at various dog poses online, as well as some existing dog shaped phone holders other people have made. I found a really good dog pose that would allow a phone to sit on the tail and be propped up back the back and head. I printed off an image to act as a template and then glued it to some thin mdf. This let me test out the design with my phone and work out how difficult it would be to then cut the shape out of a larger piece of wood with my limited (but growing!) selection of tools.

The template was actually really easy to cut out of the mdf and I transferred it to my pine block, deciding to orientate the grain to run vertically through the holder. I rough cut out the dog shape with my jigsaw and then drilled a small hole behind the front paws for the empty triangle section.

I used a combination of files and rough sandpaper to improve the shape and get up to the lines I had traced on from the template. I left slightly more of a curled up lip at the end of the tail than on the original template, as my initial tests with the mdf piece showed my phone slipped off sometimes when the tail was a bit flatter. I also reduced the section where the printed image had a collar on the front, as it didn’t look quite right on the holder without seeing a collar come round the sides. I did think about drawing one on, but decided to keep it more minimalist (and not stretch my artistic abilities too much!).

Once I was happy with the overall shape of the dog, I spent a while sanding all the sides to make the holder extra smooth. I also rounded over the edges slightly to soften the feel of the holder in my hand and reduce the chance of hurting yourself while grabbing for the phone.

I debated using a stain or any kind of finish to protect the holder, but settled for keeping it simple with the bare wood. I am still learning how different finishes interact with different types of wood and in this case, I really like the striped grain pattern up the sides and across the back of the dog. I am really happy with the finished workpiece and think it looks really good. And most importantly, my friend really liked it! 🔨