Make Your Own Hipster PDA Stylus

I’m a big fan of the Hipster PDA - the radical back-to-basics, hand-made, pocket-sized, paper personal organizer that only the coolest of the cool geeks can get away with using. (Your credibility is even more enhanced if you can whip one of these babies out of a jacket with leather elbow patches and proceed to write down 46 anagrams of trimethylxanthine.)

Now, of course with a Hipster PDA your geek cred-o-meter is already bouncing up in the red zone, but what would it take to get it into ‘Danger! Exceedingly High Geek’ territory? What every Hipster PDA needs of course: a Hipster PDA Stylus.

Here’s how I made my very own home-grown, too-cuil-4-skuil Hispter PDA Stylus: First I needed some charcoal. I could have just gone to my local art store and bought a few sticks, but where’s the living-on-the-edge, geek cred in that? So I burnt some sticks. I went to my local park one night and picked up some twigs (OK I lie: The stupid park was annoyingly clean, so I had to cut some branches off an old tree). Back at home, I then baked them in the oven for an hour or two (after an eventful night that included fire-engines, police, neighbors etc. Here’s a tip: Lighting bonfires on your balcony in the city is apparently against the law. Very against the law). When the twigs were blackened beyond belief I took them out of the oven and let them cool down.

Now we’re almost there. Next I took a piece of charcoaled twig that’s about two to three inches long, (but not too thin, as it needs to be sturdy — but not too thick, as you don’t want it too bulky). Then I wrapped some duct tape (AKA as gaffer tape, or electricians tape) around it, leaving a bit uncovered at the end. That’s it! I tested it out on a piece of card: it was a little messy; bits broke off and the writing smudged easily, but I’m sure I can improve it by fine tuning the processes next time. But for a first attempt I’m very pleased. My very own home-made retro-style stylus to go with my oh-so-hip Hipster PDA.

POP! Was that my cred-o-meter overheating and bursting? I think it was.