Grove + MapleXO
Well, it's been over a year in the making but we've finally finished the 50 limited edition Grove + MapleXO Recycled Skateboard iPhone4 cases.
It's so hard to explain how much went into making these cases, but we wanted to try to break it down for you:
An amazing Portland company, Grove makes iPhone 4 cases out of bamboo.
I really loved what Ken and Joe from Grove were doing and somehow wanted to collaborate with recycled skateboards in the mix. I just knew that the colors inside the boards had some great potential for a collaboration.
After lots of mind melting madness in the woodshop trying to figure out a way to make the material,
I finally brought Ken a block that I made out skateboards. He tested it by cutting out a couple cases. It worked! And the Grove team waved the green flag to get rolling with the collaboration!
The next few months were spent cutting down the boards into workable strips to make more blocks for the project.
Each individual strip had to be cut to the perfect dimensions, grip tape peeled off, graphics sanded away, and flattened to make it work.
We sorted through the boards and picked out the best colors, and had a blast laying out each individual case.
MapleXO's intern, Becky Donaghy, put in some major hours helping along with a lot of other MXO supporters.
After all the skateboard pieces were laid out and glued up, the guys at Grove took over and started making the magic happen.
Ben, Shay, and Sean from Grove worked around the clock to make each case perfect.
Every step in making these cases involved intricate hands-on work.
I came by the Grove shop often to help and inspect the cases as they were going through the production steps.
Seyi from Grove had his whole heart in this project, as we all did, and he created the most amazing frames for each case to be packaged and shipped in. Bamboo frames with skateboard inlays.
The last steps were fit testing them, and laser engraving them with numbers 0-50.
Once the cases were finished we had a meeting to decide exactly how we were going to run the actual online sale, and a unanimous decision was made to donate part of our proceeds to non-profit organization which YOU can help us decide from facebook!
And so HERE IT IS... the big launch of a project we're all so proud of.
The Grove + MapleXO 50 Limited Edition iPhone4 case collaboration. Spread the word!
A big thank you goes out to all the Grove and MapleXO supporters who helped make this happen! Thank you Ken, Joe, Shay, Yuji, Galen, Leela, Kim, Sean, Ben, Tommy, and the rest of the Grove team. Thank you Becky, Jim, Paul, Brent, Amity, Connie, Billy, Erik, Kevin, Buzzy, Kris and the rest of you MapleXO supporters! We couldn't have done it with out you!
xo
Lindsay Jo