Handmade CD envelopes!

I love nice boxed sets of CDs. For years I’ve been enjoying a Miles Davis boxed set. Recently I thought I’d expand my library of jazz trumpet artists, and purchased two boxed sets from Amazon: one of Clark Terry’s albums (1954-1960) and one of all of Clifford Brown’s recordings. They play very nicely in my retro Electrohome record player. Because I’m focusing on musicians from the 1950s, the record player (which also plays CDs) adds a certain something to the listening experience.

But when the new boxed sets arrive I was disappointed with the physical product. The cardboard box was too flimsy to use, there were no CD envelopes, and the plastic boxes holding the CDs broke immediately on opening. Even the listing of tracks was flawed, with typos and inconsistencies in the way song durations were notated.

So I made my own CD envelopes. Using InDesign, I created a die and a template for envelopes. I found jpegs of album covers on the Internet, and printed the envelopes on card stock with my laser printer. The results are awesome!

I still don’t have a box for these envelopes, but perhaps I’ll investigate box-making as a separate project.