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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."

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