Gadgetory

plenty of retailers sell styluses to help you control your tablet or phone usually caused somewhere from 10 to 30 bucks but that's way too expensive when you can make it on your own with just a few supplies around your house or in the office I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com and today I'll show you how to make the 2-minute stylus we've shown you how to do this before with a sponge a paper clip and a pen but here's an even easier way to do it all you need to make your stylus is a pen a q-tip scissors some tape and aluminum foil let's get started first remove the ink from the pen now take a q-tip and cut it in half I'm going to cut this one at a slant because the mouth of this pen is a little small so go ahead and insert it into the mouth of the pen and take a small piece of tape to secure it just wrap the tape around the q-tip and the mouth of the pen now take a small piece of aluminum foil I'm just going to cut out a square or rectangle and wrap that around the q-tip and the neck of the pen make sure it's secure so that the foil is pretty tight around the q-tip take another piece of tape and secure the foil to the pen make sure the foil is touching the cotton of the q-tip because in order for this to work the static electricity from your finger it needs to go through the foil and onto the q-tip then onto the screen of your phone or tablet now with that in place your stylus is almost done I'm going to put it back together so I'll take the top of the pen here it and the last thing you need to do is add a drop of water to the q-tip that's what keeps it conductive so with your finger just add a drop of water so that the entire q-tip is just a little moist you don't want it to be dripping what with that set you can start using your stylus just be sure that your finger is always touching the foil otherwise it won't work so you can tap icons open apps surf the web it's not really great for typing but it is really awesome for drawing apps like my favorite draw something if the stylus stops working all you have to do is apply a little bit more water and you're good to go this isn't the fanciest of styluses but it'll get the job done once you make your stylus tweet me a picture of it on Twitter and subscribe to my Facebook page for more tips and tricks like this for cnet.com I'm Sharon Vaknin you