How to Make a CD Album Cover

Protect your CDs with a homemade album cover.

Creating your own CD album cover is part of the creative process while burning or making your own music CD compilations. It will protect your CDs without you having to buy a bunch of CD cases. If you make your own music, the home-designed covers will help promote your band. Making a CD album cover isn't as complicated as you might think. All you need are a few basic materials that might already have in your home.

Things You'll Need

• Card stock
• Computer
• Graphic editing program
• Printer
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Stickers

Instructions

1. Load some printer-compatible card stock into your printer's paper deck.

2. Open your graphic editing program and open a new image by going to "File, New" or "File, New Image" and adjust the size settings for your album's cover art. Set the height and width of the new image to 5 inches wide by 5 inches high.

3. Design the artwork for your album cover. Go to a public domain images site to find free images and so you won't have to worry about copyright laws. You can also upload a photo that you took yourself, or create graphics with the features in your graphic editing program. Come up with concepts and designs that you haven't seen before so your album cover will stand out.

4. Go to "File, Print Setup." Adjust the page orientation to portrait and make sure that the artwork is centered on the page. Print your album cover and make as many copies as you need.

5. Lay a ruler across the top and bottom of the album art and trace a faint line with a pencil to both ends of the piece of card stock. Cut along those lines but don't cut directly over or under the artwork you created. Now you have four flaps that you can fold over your CD to protect it.

6. Change the shape of the flaps to make them easier to overlap. Cut the top and bottom flaps (the larger flaps) into half circles or triangles and slightly round the corners of the side flaps. Place the card stock artwork-side down and place the CD in the center. Fold the side flaps down first and then fold the top and bottom over them. The top and bottom flaps will meet in the middle and you can keep them together with a sticker, a piece of tape or a blank label that you can write on.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have an empty jewel case for a CD, cut out the artwork that you created and slip it into the front of the case.

References

• Just Creative Design: How I Designed 3 CD Jackets Just by Listening to Music

Resources

• Public Domain Pictures.net