The Power of a Good Valentine's Mix Disc

A couple of years ago around this time, we checked in with one of our favorite semi-annual Valentine's Day projects, Dan LaMee's "Red Roses Mix." Dan had been making them for a few years now, giving all the single women in his life very well-designed mix discs of all his favorite songs. Thinking he might have done it again for 2011, we just now took a look at his Flickr page, where he'd regularly been posting photos of his King cases. First thing we see: shots of pre- and post-wedding. So congrats all around to Dan and his lovely wife! We probably don't deserve full credit, but we think his annual mix discs certainly must have upped his standing.

A big congrats once more to Dan and his wife and here's to hoping Kings and Standards are being put to romantic use in the lovely places like Santa Monica, Jacksonville, Littlestown, Winter Park, Broomfield, New York, Bryan, Portland, Los Angeles, Rogersville, Anaheim, Beaverton, Boonville, Savannah, Venic, Pacific Palisades, Encino, Butler, Buena Park, Durham, and Weatherford.

The Holiday Hunt for 'How Thoughtful!'

Around this time of year, we think it's helpful to remind you that Jewelboxing isn't all just serious business, used to win clients' attention and affection. You can also use the system to make great holiday gifts, moving people like your mother from "It's special because you made it" to "Wow! You made this?!"

There are lots of ideas in our archives. Taken from just this year alone, you could do something like Phillip Chee and create mix discs for all those on your list. Or gather up all the films of someone's favorite director and put together the perfect box set, like designer Raymond Forbes did. Give that teenage designer to put their portfolio in so they can get into any college of their choosing (it worked for Mason Sklar). Or create the world's finest photography set by combining a disc full of snaps and a multi-page accompanying booklet, using our handy tutorial. Finally, for more season-specific reference, here's the holiday-ideas recap we put together last year.

Whatever you wind up making, if you use Jewelboxing, thanks for letting us play a part in making the holidays bright for you and yours, and impressing the heck out of your mom along the way.

A special nod to all those in Livonia, Los Altos, North Vancouver, Portland, Irvine, Sao Paulo, Lehi, San Juan, Wilton, Olympia, Allston, Nelson, New York, Rivonia, Seattle, Austin, Saint Martinville, Los Angeles, Plano, and Hoboken.

Return of the Red Rose

Back in 2007, we highlighted Dan LaMee's "Red Roses Mix" project, a mix disc he put together using Jewelboxing Kings to give all his single girl friends "something special, more memorable, and more lasting than a cut flower." It was a terrific Valentine's Day gift and on taking a look at Dan's Flickr page again recently, we discovered that he was back at it with his Red Roses Mix 2009. The new edition looks even better, but this time, according to the description, this case was made for Dan's girlfriend. So did one of his previous mixes turn a friend into something more? We don't know, but we're going to blindly chalk this one up to Jewelboxing-fueled love anyway, just because we'd really like to believe it.

Thanks again to Dan for sharing with us back in 2007 and for posting his most recent work on Flickr for all the world to see. And here's to hoping love was packaged just as nicely for those in Los Angeles, Venice, Toronto, New York, Crows Nest, Burlington, Vilnius, Baton Rouge, Ladue, Richmond, Dublin, Singapore, Brooklyn, Joondalup, Santa Monica, Foothill Ranch, Boston, Manchester, Vestal, Esher, Kuala Lumpur, and Nashville.

Give the Gift of Jewelboxing

If all the snow we got last night is any indication, winter is officially here. And with winter comes the holiday season when guests are welcomed, hearts are warmed, and gifts are exchanged. Through the years, we've seen Jewelboxing used to great effect on all three. There have been John Tolva's great mix discs for his annual holiday party, given out to each guest. Andrea Buchanan shared with us her process of making Jewelboxing-packaged photo CDs of her newborn to give to family and friends. And the motion graphics firm The Neighbourhood used our King cases to deliver a holiday film they'd made to thank their clients and supporters of their work.

There are a million ideas for what you could use Jewelboxing for this holiday season and whatever your gifting plans are, even if you'd just like to give that designer in your life a case of cases and let them do the designing, we'd love to help out.

A Very Tolva Christmas

If you read this blog with unusual devotion, you might recall this quote from 2006 in relation to John Tolva's annual holiday party: "I've got to befriend this guy as soon as possible so I get an invite next year." Well, we're proud to announce that we did just that. Not only did we hit up a few neighborhood bars with John throughout 2007, we also went with him to Los Alamos, New Mexico to film a documentary. But, of course, the big moment of pride was when we got a much-coveted invite to his annual party. John has the full report here, if you'd like to read up on what it was like and what it takes to put together one of the best holiday parties around. What's more, and how this all comes full circle to become relevant, is that John once again gave out holiday mix discs, packaged in Jewelboxing, complete with a mini-pencil in the case's spine, allowing you to check off if you were naughty, nice or a little of both. And once more, they were a blast to pick up and bring home.

But he didn't stop there. On his terrific site, Ascent Stage, he offered up a few pointers in making Jewelboxing a little easier to work with when you're printing a bazillion of them and you've got to get them out in a hurry. Here's a couple:

There's a few more beyond that, but we didn't want John to get angry at us for swiping all the content off his site. It's a great batch of info, so we highly encourage you to check it out before your next project.

Thanks again to John for the invitations and the great pointers and to those in Eureka, Brooklyn, Marina Del Ray, Atlanta, Henderson, Leamington Spa, West Covina, Des Moines, Evanston, Louisville, Savannah, San Francisco, Ventura, Crows Nest, Raleigh, St. Paul, New Kensington, Hatton, Jacksonville, Minneapolis, Alexandria, New York and Kalispell.

Meeting the New Neighbours

Granted, talking about Christmas in February is a bit odd. It's even a little too early for one of those "Christmas in June!" sales at a local department store. But when you hear from The Neighbourhood, an amazing new firm in Manchester, about the beautiful holiday film they made in December, the time of year takes a back seat. Here's from Jon Humphreys, Creative Director:

"The Neighbourhood is a CGI imaging/animation company now in our 6th month of business. One of our mission statements is to keep creating self-generated pieces of work. So we thought we would celebrate Christmas and officially announce our arrival into the world with a short animation. After its online release, we received such great response from around the world it made good sense to send out DVD copies to friends, clients etc."

"After a little searching we discovered the fantastic Jewelboxing solution for the disc packaging. This proved to be a stylish and cost effective way of personalizing our film and present as gifts as we could design and print our own cover with ease. We did decide to make things a little difficult for ourselves though by making 180 in a 2 day time frame to make the last post before Christmas! [here's a time lapse video of the process] Things would have been a lot tougher if we had to hand cut every cover/insert individually though!"

We're really happy to have helped The Neighbourhood make their flashy holiday entrance a bit more special. And we hope, even in February, they're still feeling a little of that spirit in Copenhagen, Toledo, Houston, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Birkdale, Cincinnati, San Jose, Santa Ana, New York, Breckenridge, Minneapolis, Spokane, Grand Rapids, Charlottenlund, East Brunswick, Markham, Manitou Springs, Paoli, Dallas, and Clapham.

'Tis the Season for Another Great Mix Disc Idea

We had our Coudal Partners/Jewelboxing holiday party last week and while it was a lot of fun, it's difficult for any party to compete with the one put together by Ascent Stage's John Tolva. Just reading about the whole thing makes you think, "I've got to befriend this guy as soon as possible so I get an invite next year." There was a photo booth, homemade hard cider, an open DJ table for anyone to try their hands at, and even a multi-room train set. And then he went the extra mile and made us happy by incorporating Jewelboxing into the whole bacchanalia. Like last year, when he used Tic Tacs in the case spines (an idea we borrowed to put to use for our Holidisc packages), he once again made mix discs for every attendee. But this time around, he had a whole new idea:

"This year I searched high and low for glow sticks that were the proper size for the hinge chamber. My idea was to have red and green glowing CDs. Turns out glow sticks are made in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes for everything from costumes to golf balls to fishing lures. This last category -- called Lunker Lights -- was the perfect size for the chamber. The effect was stunning -- though it only lasted for about 8 hours. Rave on!"

Here's to hoping that the holidays are just as bright for all those in London, Ferguson, Austin, Sydney, Santiago, Frankfurt, Little Elm, Naples, Schamburg, Saint George, Miami, Ventura, Boston, Yonkers, Sarasota, Sherman Oaks, Marcola, Fall River, Brattleboro, Fallbrook, Greenfield, Hollywood, Seattle, Fort Washington, Mount Vernon, Surrey, and Charlotte.

Our Life in Pictures

We asked for a Mom or Dad with design skills to write us a note if they'd like to try our system free of charge and document the creative and production process. Andrea Buchanan, author of "Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It" (Seal Press, 2003) and managing editor of LiteraryMama.com, an online literary magazine, answered our call. Here's Andi's account of completing a run of photo CD's to be given as gifts.

I was very excited to participate in this project, as I had been planning to put together a CD of photos to send as a gift to relatives, but was stuck on exactly how to create a package that would be more appealing than the standard slim CD case. Once I downloaded the files from jewelboxing.com, I decided to use the Photoshop templates – I would have preferred to use Quark, but Quark and my printer were not getting along, so I ended up designing everything using Photoshop.

I had a concept in mind for the first design – my husband had taken a series of photos that had great light and nice color balance, and I thought those would work well. I opened the PSD "king tray" template files and used them to figure out the sizing I'd need for the photos I wanted to use. Once I sized the photos correctly, I just dropped them into a new layer in the PSD template. Then I adjusted the opacity of the photo layer so I could see the guidelines in the layer beneath and make sure the photos were aligned correctly. I used the text tool to add a layer of text to the graphics. I did this for each of the templates – the inner and outer tray, the disc label, the inside and outside booklet – and my design for jewelbox number one was done.

I first printed the booklet out on plain paper using my black and white laser printer to make sure everything lined up where it was supposed to. [ed. note: while this is a good idea to check your layout, we recommend printing a plain-paper test on the printer you'll use to print the cases, because alignment can change between printers.] I checked the printout against the actual templates and then went back to the files to nudge a few things into place based on what I saw comparing my printout to the template paper. Then I printed the outside booklet using my ink-jet color printer. It came out fine, though, due to my printer, it would have looked nicer on a glossy page. [ed. note: news on this soon] I did the same thing for the rest of the templates – printing out in black and white on plain paper to make sure things were good, then printing on the real thing in color. A few times the black and white printing helped me realize I'd forgotten to hide the background template layer, so that was a good step to include in the process.

After that first design was done and printed out, I did do some reprints to adjust a few things – the text on the CD label didn't pop enough for me, so I changed the color; one of the photos rendered too dark on my printer, so I fixed that. Mostly, though, it was a painless process.

I had two more layout ideas, so I actually designed those right on top of the first design, creating a duplicate file for each, using the original design as a reference for size and positioning, dropping everything in on top of that, and then deleting the original layer(s). I then followed the same basic printing procedure I did with the first design (though I eliminated the printing-in-black-and-white step, since I knew the graphics were aligned correctly and would print well). I'm very happy with how all three turned out!

Wanted: One Mom or Dad With Design Skills

Here's the deal. We'd like someone to produce a Christmas present with Jewelboxing and document the process for us. In exchange we'll send you the materials to do it free of charge. Write us at crew at jewelboxing dot com and tell us why you think you should be considered. The person we choose will put together some sort of photo or video archive and design and assemble all the packaging. They'll need to do it fast, and they'll need to be able to write up the whole process and maybe even document it with photos too. We'll send you all the materials free of charge and of course give you full credit and linkage for your effort. Aunts and uncles are eligible too. Any takers?

You might be from Morriston, Ipsach, Portland, LA, Alpharetta, Valencia, Richmond, Holland, London, NYC, DC, Century City, Minneapolis, Muskegon, Toronto, Egg Harbor City, Waltham, Ann Arbor, Arcadia, Brooklyn, West Columbia or Helena, but you could be from just about anywhere.

Early Holiday Planning

If you're planning on using Jewelboxing to create a special archive of music, photos or video for the holidays here's a couple links to previous posts that might be helpful.
How to Be a Hero.
For Moms and Dads with Moms and Dads.
Hand Me the Remote.

To Antoine in Philly whose mail keeps bouncing. 1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. No so far we haven't. 4. It depends on Federal Postal Regulations.

Thanks a million to Salt Lake City, London, Amarillo, Irvine, NYC, Rocklin, Alpharetta, Fort Lee, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Lexington, Madison, Montreal, Malden, Oakdale, Danville, Dallas, Savannah, Santa Monica, Auckland, Santa Rosa, Valley Stream and Eden Prairie.