Actually, no, there aren’t that many.  But when you make 100+ CD cases by hand, it feels like a lot.

Sorry, this post is my craft-nerd coming out.  If you just want to know where you can get it, head over to my Bandcamp page here.

For the rest of you craft people:

This has been a long time coming.  My goal was to get these done before the album release two months ago, but I only managed to get 10 fully complete due to, you know, life happening and stuff.

As much as I pretend to complain about these taking forever, though, I really enjoyed the process of designing and crafting these.  There was a long period of me binge-watching youtube videos of how to make pop-ups, simultaneous to me making packaging mock-ups out of paper.  That all lead to this design.

For those interested in making your own CD cases some day, my advice to you: don’t.  Unless you’re like me and spend all your free time making things all day anyway.

The pop-up and cover were made with a linocut print.  If you were at the Hotel Cafe show, you’ll remember the “everything looks better on fire” match boxes, which were my first foray into linocut printing.  This was my second.

Each print had to be cut out with glueing tabs at the bottom taken into consideration.  Each was then folded in half, then an additional counter fold was added to the face to give the accordion extra dimension.

The Part that took the longest was portion holding the CD itself.  Each One had to be precisely drafted to the right measurements, cut out, and then scored ever so slightly to allow for the creases.  After the general shape was cut out, an additional section of card was removed to allow the CD to be inserted with ease.  Finally, the case was glued together.

I’ll be honest: the text is just a fancy sticker.  Sorry, not sorry.  And another linocut stamp on the back.  That’s my face.  My name isn’t on the front so I might as well put it on the back.  But in picture form.

For the front, I cut a full sheet of wood down to 5 inch squares.  Printed, edges sanded lightly (making sure to round the corners a bit), then glued.

Numbering!  This was the part that annoyed my neighbors.

On the back panel, hidden behind where the CD would eventually go, I took letter punches and hammered them into the card, starting with 1 and working all the way up to 100.  Around case number 80 or so, the neighbors started knocking on the apartment wall, which I took as a sign to “please shut up,” since the sounds of continuous hammering aren’t particularly pleasant.  I finished the last 20 the following day.

I was intending to have the front screen printed, but there was about two months worth of complications, so what ended up happening was that editions 1-10 have a screen printed blue outline of the character, with the addition of the now-traditional linocut on top.  And I lied.  There aren’t 100 copies.  There’s 104.  I have number “0.” for posterity’s sake, Mom and Dad have number “101,” Juan Charlie, who did the awesome album artwork, and Grant, who produced it, also have copies, where instead of a number, I stamped their names into it.

I actually ordered 103 of the CDs themselves, 100 to make, 3 extra for Juan Charlie, Grant, and myself.  When the package arrived in the mail, however, I had a stack of CDs with the number 105 printed on the side.  I guess the company I got them from doesn’t like my tendency to work with very specific non-zero-ending numbers, because I actually have 110 discs total.  Not sure what I’m going to do with the remaining 6, because for as much as I enjoyed the process, I’m ready to take a break from making these.