I carry around an ancient Zire 71, from the time before PDAs merged with phones and PCs to become fashionable objects of desire.
Anyway, it turns out that the buttons on the front are remarkably easy to squash in your pocket: the poor thing spends a lot of time turning itself on and off. I machined a plate with two holes for the four buttons and a lengthwise recess with two notches for the joystick selector. The whole affair slides into the pouch Mary made for it and works fine.
I tweaked the thing a bit when I got a replacement Zire a few months ago; the grippy tape I put on the sides seemed to be just large enough to force the joystick against the protector while sliding it into the pouch. Now that’s not a problem.
This is in the nature of documentation, just in case I need something like this ever again. I found these pix while looking for something else …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
What is that material?
I was afraid you were going to ask that.
It’s some kind of plastic, nubbly on one side, carved from a divider salvaged from an 8-inch floppy diskette storage box, 3/32-inch thick. It’s been in the stockpile for a looong time.
Probably styrene: cuts like butter if you don’t get too aggressive. Seemed like the right stuff for the job: moderately flexible, doesn’t break when I drop it, the original piece was big enough.
What, *me specifically*? Oh dear…
(Seems like a perfectly reasonable chunk of material!)