DIY CD Labels and Envelope

Since I love taking pictures I end up taking lots when we have get togethers and I offer to give my friends high resolution copies of the pictures so they can print it out. Recently we had a playdate. I love that my friends invite me even if I don’t have a baby and it’s so much fun and educational for me to hang out with them and their babies! And I end up taking a gazillion pictures of so many precious moments! Normally I would just save it in a USB or CD and hand it over in a sleeve or envelop.

Since my mac wouldn’t save to the external drive that my friend gave me (which was formatted for PC) I decided to burn it on a CD, but did not have any CD sleeves available. As you know I’ve been super inspired to do DIY and crafting projects lately because of PINTEREST. Especially inspiring are those that I’ve pinned on my DIPLO diy, DIPLO gift wrapping and DIPLO organizers boards!

So I decided to make my own CD “sleeve” by using this tutorial as a guide.

DIY CD Case/Envelope

1. Since it’s prettier with paper that has a print on both the front and back, and I only had some spare scrapbooking boards with white backgrounds, I found this website with free scrabooking templates and printed out stripes in the back of my boards. I downloaded this pdf for A4.
2. Cut out 4 circles using a CD to trace and cut around the lines. Since only 3 circles fit in one A4, one of the circles can be a different color if you don’t have any more of the same design. You’ll need 4 circles the size of your CD.
3. Fold each of the four circles in half like this.
4. Arrange the folds together in a square, carefully overlapping each circle under and over the circles next to it like this.
5. Instead of gluing the pieces together like this, I just used double sided tape so I don’t need to wait for glue to dry.
6. Now I have my CD case!

I don’t have particularly great handwriting so I hate the way it looks when I label CDs! But thank God I found this UBL CD/DVD Printable Labels from Ace Hardware Gandaria. So here’s how I printed the CD labels without any previous experience. With a little help from TD!

DIY CD Label

1. Open up Microsoft Word for Mac
2. Look for the CD Label Template under Publication Templates and choose the design you like. Don’t worry about the color because you can change the color later. (click screenshots to enlarge)
3. Then I filled up the information on the template (i.e. CD #, X of X, date, title, description) for the 2 CDs that I was labeling.
4. Then I click on FILE > PAGE SETUP
5. On PAPER SIZE, I click on MANAGE CUSTOM SIZE
6. Then I click on the PLUS (+) sign and create a new custom size labelled “CD stickers”. Below are the dimensions I used:
7. I also removed the document margins on the toolbox by setting everything to zero:
8. Once that’s done your project is going to look a little weird. The page will be the correct size, but your CD labels are going to cut-off because the background design and text are not properly aligned. The text is easy to fix, just SELECT ALL (command + A) and then GROUP by clicking this:then move the copy to the center of your page.
9. To correct the placement of the background, you will have to click on the MASTER PAGES tab on the bottom of the page: 
10. There I again grouped the images and moved them to the center of the page. While looking at my CD Printable Label I eyeballed the correct placement. Always remember to make the background design bigger than the CD itself. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfectly centered or not, as long as there is a bleed on all sides. (Note: This is how the bleed looks after I remove the sticker. Not really perfectly centered right?)
11. If blue is not your cup of tea, you can change the colors by changing the DOCUMENT THEME on the Toolbox:
12. Then it’s time to do a test print! I cut a piece of scratch paper (I try to be environmental!) to the exact same dimensions of the label and print it out. And good thing I did because when I compared it to the actual sticker paper, some of the text would have gone over the edge. So I adjusted it a bit – again just eyeballing it.
13. Then I did an actual print and stick on the CD! I’m glad I didn’t waste any sticker paper by doing the test print first. But I’ve saved the document so I can use it for future labels. All I need to do is change the text and color!

Below are sample labels that I’ve done. Sorry for the quality as the images were only taken with my iPhone via Instagram.

Once the CDs were in the CD Case I got some spare ribbons (I usually keep ribbons I get from gifts and reuse them. It is such a pity to throw them away when there are so many ways to use them!) and used what I learned from this tutorial on how to tie the perfect bow-tie to do the bow. then I get a card, punch a hole put a gold string through and tie it to the bow. Et voilà!

From handing out a boring old CD, it becomes a little gift or token that will surely be appreciated by friends. =) I hope you found this post helpful! And I’m sure labeling my CD’s will make them more fun to organize and store like this! Now I just need to get my grubby hands on that CD organizer from The Container Store!