Our most popular case design for the past few months has actually not been designed by us at all! Mash Up (or mashup ;) cases are the latest craze and the designs are one-of-kind and designed by YOU!
How it started
The idea for the mash up case actually came to us several years ago. We were brainstorming how to be more sustainable as a business and create less waste. One specific opportunity was finding a way to reuse our misprints and extra prints that tend to accumulate in the office!
Our phone cases are all made using sublimation, a process where the design is printed using special ink and paper, then heat pressed onto the case template. The inks vaporize when heat is applied, permanently embedding into the phone case and creating a vibrant design.
The first step in this process is to print the design, but sometimes we end up with unused prints, This can happen if we accidentally print the wrong design color or size, or sometimes there are defects in the prints that make a portion of the image unusable. We don't throw these prints away, rather we save them in case we can use them in the future. The pile keeps growing, however, and we were looking for new ways to resuse and repurpose these prints so they don't get wasted.
Enter the "mash up" design! Our idea was to use pieces of the extra prints and combine them together into a unique new design, either randomly or based on some color or design theme. We first tried this back in 2021 during some downtime at a pop up shop but didn't really do anything more with the idea right away. It wasn't until late 2022 that we decided to try it on camera, and the resulting TikTok got a lot of attention!
We kept playing with the idea and posting different mash up combos on TikTok, trying different techniques (such as tearing the pieces instead of cutting them) and various design themes. Eventually the idea became so popular that we created a new product on our website allowing customers to create their own mash up design.
Mash ups started poppin' just before we left for our family beach vacation, and as they say -- the rest is history!
Making your own mash up
You can now create your own mash up phone case on our site, and we will make the one-of-a-kind case just for you! If you need some help, be sure to check out our Tips & Tricks article on how to create the perfect mash up!
Create your own Mash Up Phone Cases for iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or Google Pixel!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
It's easy to get upset when people copy your ideas, but honestly we know it just means our idea was a good one! We have seen a few other small businesses experimenting with creating mash up content, and we even saw some copycat designs posted on Shein and Temu!
We are happy to be inspiring other creators and hope you enjoy creating your very own mash up design, too!
Inspo Gallery
Want some inspiration? The gallery below shows some of the mash up designs created by our customers! We also have a lot of TikTok and Instagram Reel content with different customer mash ups -- be sure to follow @abbyrosecases!
