While I wait for my clear acrylic case to be shipped I have been keeping the Raspberry pi in the box it came in. This is (obviously) impractical as I have to disconnect and reconnect wires every time I use it. One thing with the Raspberry Pi is the huge community behind it doing all sorts of crazy things. Cases is one of the most popular mods that people are putting effort into. There are many official and unofficial manufacturers of cases designed specifically for the Raspi, but what about all those random items you have lying around? As I linked to in a previous post, people have made cases out of cigarette boxes and Lego. After some browsing a found a forum post where the OP was thinking about making a case out of the packaging his iPhone came in. That’s when it hit me. I always kept my iPhone boxes because I thought they were beautiful and I always wondered what I could do with them. So I dug up my old iPhone 3GS box and got to cutting it up. About an hour later I was finished (the cardboard is incredibly thick…) and I had a pretty decent looking housing for my media centre.
Bonus: you can use the piece of plastic that the iPhone comes in as a lid for the box, with the hole in the middle serving as airflow to prevent overheating!