The Jewelboxing folks deserve as much praise as you can heap on them. Their system allows you to produce a polished product on the cheap. Basically, you get the parts of a sharply designed jewel case complete with rounded corners and clasp closure that works. In addition, you receive perforated card stock sheets and downloadable templates for your graphics software. Hand over the templates to your excellent graphic designer friend and then print them out.

This is where it does get a bit tricky. I decided to have the inserts laser printed. The artwork turned out well and my ink jet printer couldn't saturate the card stock properly so proper printing became the only course of action. Unfortunately, the printing turned into a bit of an ordeal. After getting a good tip from a friend that Leewood Press was the place to go, they farmed my job out to someone who inserted the pages in the wrong direction thus ruining them. Honest mistake. But it cost me several weeks and some cash to replace though I didn't have to pay for that particular printing run. All in all I think the printing ran me $256 for 127 sheets, some double sided. Not exactly cheap.

Printing is just one of those steps in the record release process that just takes longer and costs more than expected. Gene, who managed the print job, was very understanding and patient so I can't complain too much. Printing is also one of those things that is painful at the time but the pain diminishes in the memory. That's why I'm writing this all down.

My only complaint with the Jewelboxing system is that some of the corners of the perforated sheets are difficult to punch out. There is one section that has longer cut marks and thus it is prone to ripping. Then the rounded corners, which fit tightly into the rounded corners of the jewel cases, can be cantankerous and rip at the most inopportune time. In other words, as long as you have some coordination, unlike myself, you'll be fine. Just work with the sheets in small batches. I did ten at a time and I'd say my error rate was 1 or 2 rips per ten. I simply stacked those up in a give away pile (though I never actually gave them away; it just made me less upset about it).

I bought a 30 pack and then a 60 pack of the standard CD cases which ran me around $150. The blank CDRs cost $48 for 100 from CD Dimensions. The Taiyo Yuden CDRs can be inserted into an ink jet printer. I picked up the Epson Photo R300 which allows one to print onto one CDR at a time. It is tedious but the printer only cost me about $180. The price of ink jet printers is pretty astounding when you consider the output they can produce. I'm plenty pleased. It took me a few tries to get the ink saturation just right on the CDRs. Ron and I had to darken the art work a few times to get that rich brown color but in the end I think we got it right.

Finally, a short note about the art work itself. The photo is a shot I took at Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, Japan. I handed over that photo and some others to Ron and blathered on about how I wanted the look of a card from a library card catalog, something literary, familiar, staid, yet graphically striking. Then some more mumbling about adding some schematics. To Ron's credit there was no eye rolling and any of the four designs he came up with would have been perfect.

Thus far I've received plenty of compliments about the jewel cases and the art work. It is visually striking and stands up well next to more expensively produced releases. The only downside is what's inside. It is going to be a little while before CDR releases are treated with the same level of respect as a replicated release. But the sharp packaging helps folks get beyond the technology and into the music.