 This is my iPhone X, and I love it. I think it's great, but I also think it kinda needs a case. And for me, the best case, even though it's a little bit overpriced, is the official Apple iPhone X leather case. I think it's a really nice balance of protection and usability, it feels pretty good, but I think it also looks kinda ugly out of the box. Look how, I don't know, yellow it is. Now if you use this for a few months, you eventually get something like this, which I think is lovely. It's got this nice patina, and it just feels really personal to me. But I don't wanna wait a few months, so I'm gonna show you later on in this video how I went from this to this with sandpaper and oil and a whole bunch of crazy work. But here's a question, why do I care this much about cases? Turns out the best person to answer that question isn't me, it's the Virgin's resident case expert, Ashley Carman. So let's go talk to her. Man, I think this was last summer, I reviewed this phone case, Pom Pom phone case, and I was so excited when I opened it. I was like, this is the cutest thing I've ever seen in my whole life, and then within three weeks, it was literally like a torture device, because these little hairs kept showing up everywhere, like in my food, seriously, like in my food, like the most random bowl, like a bowl that wasn't even near my phone. I would just like get food, and it would be in there, the hairs. It would be out my clothes. These little filaments come off, and they like float around your whole, oh my god. Yeah, it would be in my drinks. Yeah, you have one now. They stick everywhere. I have like shunned this, but I brought it out just for this occasion. When I buy a phone case, the first thing I'm thinking about is like, okay, I'm gonna protect my phone, so when I drop it, it won't smash. None of these cases are that like basic and functional, so like what are you looking for with a case? Well, yeah, I'm not really looking for protection, which is probably a mistake. I'm more just trying to find the weirdest case. Well, I mean, the reason I wanted to talk to you is like, so this is the after of my iPhone X case. And so the Apple case on its own is like really like yellow and tan, and I wanted it to look cool and weathered. So I just started thinking about why I am caring this much about the way a case looks, because when I, up to now, I just thought about it as like protection. If everyone has the same looking phone, every phone looks the same. How are you gonna differentiate it? How are you gonna express your own personal style? Applying the term fashion to cases seems, I don't know, frivolous, but it actually like, it makes perfect sense. If you think it's fashion as clothes, like clothes need to have that like primary function. They need to keep you from dying in like the cold weather, whatever, like they're functional. But like, it's how you present yourself to the world. But I also think it's like how you present yourself to yourself, you feel different depending on what you're wearing. And there's no reason that shouldn't also apply to a phone. I totally agree. Like I think there's people out there who buys, you know, unique Android phones, or maybe not, just not like the mainstream ones, because they're like, I wanna be able to show that I am into OnePlus or something like that. Yeah. With iPhones. They all, they're all the same. Yeah. You are giving away like your like fashion sense to Jhonti Ive. And he's got great fashion sense. I guess he wears like the t-shirts and the weird pants. Yeah, I know. But like, I'm not Jhonti Ive, I'm super not. It's good design. But I don't know. Design is fashion. I wanna be individual. And it's hard though. I mean, there's a lot of cool cases, but eventually start running into the same things. Like this glitter falling case, you see a ton of these now, or it's like the liquid. So it's hard to find these more unique styles. Okay, so what do we learn? Well, first of all, we learned Ashley is amazing. Thank you, Ashley. Now I feel way better about this project that I'm about to embark on. Tools, cardboard. Of course I have the Unsullied Apple Case. I went to Walgreens and I got some sandpaper blocks and also coconut oil, 100%, extra virgin, with shea butter, and of course paper towel. So if you know anything about leatherworking, what I'm about to do to this case is going to horrify you. But you know what? I don't care. It's my case. I wanna make it feel more like my case. And so to make it better, I'm gonna destroy a little bit first. Let me show you how. So there are four basic steps to get from this to this. The first step is that this case has a protective coating on it. You need to get that off. I'm gonna sand it off, but you could also use like nail polish remover. The second step is you need something to darken the leather once you've got that coating off. I'm gonna use coconut oil, but some people use shoe polish. I mean, you could spit on the thing if you want to. The third step is leave it out, preferably outside in the sun, because it's gonna smell bad and also the sun helps speed up the darkening process. And then the final step, and this is kind of important, is once it's back on your phone, you just kind of have to worry at it a little bit, to smooth it out and just sort of get all the little weird bits that happen in the whole process smoothed out and looking better. Okay, so here we go. I'm starting with a pretty heavy grit, and then I'm gonna go to a lighter grit, but you could just use whatever you got sitting around the house. And immediately you're gonna see, this is a really scary thing I'm doing. You know, just be careful. Don't over sand it and end up just completely ruining the case. But I'm just kind of hitting all the corners, hitting all the edges. Another thing to be aware of is you don't have to hit the edges quite as much as you do like the back and the Apple logo, simply because that's where the natural oils from your hand are gonna be hitting the phone the most anyway, and so they're gonna get darker on their own. This case is gonna be sitting around my house. It's gonna be sitting around me all the time. And there's a lot of stuff that sits around my house, sits around me all the time that I want to be nice, and I want to feel like it's mine. So Ashley and I talked a lot about cases in terms of fashion, but it's also a thing that's just around. I have a favorite chair. I have a favorite blanket. I've got, I don't know, nice plates. And looking at this case every day, I can look at it and I will be able to feel better about this thing that I helped make. But yeah, I think this thing is ready for oil. All right, so as I'm spraying this thing, it's pretty intense. It smells really bad. Sorry about that. And then I do need to work it in a little bit just to make sure it hits all the different parts of the phone. So I was inspired to do this by this thread over on the MacRumors forums called Patina Proud, which is just a whole bunch of people who have this case that were showing off how they managed to get a really nice patina on their case. And they talked about their different methods for getting there. And you end up with something that looks like this. And I think this looks awesome. It looks distressed and cool and mine. And that's the point. It looks like it's mine. Whether you do what Ashley does and you buy a bunch of weird cases that are unique to her or you do what I do and you literally destroy a phone case, you want it to feel like it's yours. Technology can be alienating and it can feel generic. Everybody has the same thing. And so customizing your case can make technology be what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to belong to you. Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching my weird science experiment. If you wanna see actual real science, you should check out our brand new YouTube channel. It's Verge Science. You absolutely wanna click the link somewhere here. It's awesome.