Silkscreening CD-Rs?

anonymous amateur silkscreener asks: "Here's a question for those Slashdot readers who fall into the intersection of Photographer / Artists / Computer user. A comment posted in response to the story on Sneaking Open Source Software Through the Front Door led me to this company which makes some cute silk-screened blank CD-Rs. I send out CDs once in a while with photos or (occasionally) my own graphics. Now for a little while, I've been thinking about making some home-screened graphics for them, and I wonder if anyone out there has already done some of the experimentation necessary. I have a silk-screen kit which I have successfully used to make T-shirts and other things (on paper and fabric, that is), but with CDs I'm uncertain about the results."

"I am uncertain for the following reasons:

• Disintegration of the graphic - I'm actually afraid to put the results in a drive, because I'm worried that the pigment will be spun right off the disk and foul the mechanism, and I don't have a dozen replacements sitting around. Is there special pigment I should be using for this? If I spray a sealant on a CD, will the result be too heavy, or too thick, or possibly damage the drive? Yes, I know there are factory-produced screened disks all over the place, but I don't know if they're doing anything special to protect / seal their graphics. They seem to have a nice smooth surface, and I've never seen one to separate graphics from disk from wear or anything.
• Balance: If I screen on an asymmetric design, will I unbalance the disk too much? I suppose not, because there are those wacky shaped CDs, too.

Note, this is not for mass production; this is for sending small runs of decorated CDs to friends and family, as holiday gifts and so forth. If I were making 1000 of them, I'm sure it would be easier to have them mass produced. This is more about hobby / craft / homemade appeal. Like homemade holiday cards -- more personal than Hallmark, or for that matter than a sharpie-scrawled CD-R that says "snapshots" under a brand name.

More generally, can anyone point to their own successes / failures / HOWTOs on creative CD embellishment? (and packaging for that matter!) I'd like to avoid the expensive 'buy our special CD-sized stickers' approach if possible, but there are probably things I've overlooking.

No Batik, please."

Comments

Office karma

[Ratso Baggins]

Scan an Offce CD and use the printed label option for ease. Take it to work and "safely store" the real Office CD and put this one in it's place. Be a good soldier and "help out" with the "boring" installs, and your good deed is done.