#I even have a cricut I just don't have like. sticker paper. lol

[incivisi]

made these a while ago but forgot to post em uhhh. stickers? maybe?

I dunno which one looks better but it doesn't really matter cause I don't have materials to make stickers I just thought these were cute

[shinesurge]

your custom cassettes are really really cool! ive been thinking about making custom cassettes for a bit, would you be willing to share what kind of paper you used for the label stickers and j-cards? also where do you get blank cassettes from? ive been looking at cassettecomeback but i was wondering if there was a better option.

Thanks a lot! They're really fun to make hehe

So full disclosure: I run a merch shop for my webcomic and I make most of my stuff myself in my studio. I've been doing this for the better part of ten years and over that time I've accumulated quite a bit of specialized, expensive equipment like the photo printer and cutting machine I use to make my cassette ephemera. THAT SAID mixtapes don't necessarily need all that!! Unless you're running a bootleg business on etsy or somethin I don't think you and your friends gotta run out and spend a ton of money to make these (beyond tracking down a deck and a player, obviously).

Unfortunately most of these items are found on Amazon because I'm a professional artist trying to Live, but if that's something you'd rather avoid buying through I'm listing the brick and mortar places I can find them when I need to for whatever reason!

My j-cards are just the 8x10 glossy photo paper from Pen & Gear, it's usually less than ten bucks a pack at walmart lmao. I use it with an inkjet photo printer! There are plenty of laser printer options out there though, which is probably the type non-artists have access to. Honestly I think the look of black ink on colored copy paper is super cool for handmade tapes, especially between friends.

My sticker paper was a bitch to find and I'm not sure if it would be useful without my specific equipment, but it's this glossy adhesive photo paper from some rando company called LDProducts. Literally just called "Sticker Photo Paper" pf. It's more expensive but I get it in stacks of a hundred because I print tons of stickers for my shop. Again, glossy adhesive paper might not be useful without a big boy printer but MATTE sticker paper is everywhere, that's also pretty common to find at walmart or at the very least at an office supply store; you can print on it or even get out some markers (not sure i'd suggest anything besides ink tho, I'd be worried it could come off and damage the player). I design the labels in clip studio and then load them into cricut so it's super easy to get the right shape every time, but if you're Determined you could get out a measuring tape and an xacto knife and get similar results.

I've only found my tapes on amazon unfortunately, and it's been a while since I bought any because I sort of inherited a bunch of sealed ones when my dad died and i'm still going through them lol. Almost all my custom ones are 90 minute Sony High Fidelity, last I checked you could order them in packs of five or ten but I'm not sure what the prices are like rn. If you REALLY want to get fancy with colored shells/custom lengths i did find this cool site you can order from, Duplication.ca, but the shipping is kinda rough. One of these days I wanna make some cassettes for my webcomic and I'll drop some money on some pretty ones then, but for now the Sonys are treating me fine so I haven't dug too deep.

I hope something in here is useful! I'm always happy to share what I know but again, I'm very fortunate to have access to quite a bit of stuff most people don't and I try to be up front about it alskdjf. Cassettes are best when they're sorta janky and handmade tho, it's kind of the whole point, and if they're just for you or someone you care about then marking them with a sharpie and masking tape is just as cool in my opinion. probably cooler. everybody should put music on physical media and trade it i think.