Okay, so I invest thousands of hours in creating that attractive DVD or CD, complete with surround sound, liner notes, and artsy cover, but when someone buys it, something's not quite right. Of course! It's not shrinkwrapped!

In the past I would occasionally go to a fulfillment house or even a local Kinko's or OfficeDepot store, but doing so was not that much fun. For one thing, the results seemed to vary quite a bit. For another, many places charge a base price and then a unit cost. Plus, I actually had to drive somewhere in order to get it done.

Finally, last week I decided to try for myself. After a bit of on-line sleuthing, I settled on a kit provided by a merchant down in Los Angeles. The whole cost for the sealer, heat gun, a ton of bags, and even a power strip was about $84 (no sales tax here in Oregon).

Today the kit arrived, and I've put an hour or two into learning how to do this. No doubt many of you are old hands at this, but for the newbies, here's a few things I've learned so far:

For your $84 you get a really cool heat gun that looks just like a Soviet-era hair dryer. It puts out a ton of heat, though, and is very quiet in operation. Be careful. In addition you get an "impulse" wire sealer. This little guy has a jaw capacity of 8", which is smallish but perfectly suited to sealing up CDs and DVDs. Built like a tank and nearly as heavy, it contains circuitry to make your task error-free.

You can order a variety of heat-shrinkable bags. I chose the ones measuring 6.5 x 10.5 inches, suitable for either CD or DVD box. You get 500 (!), which should keep you going for a while. They also throw in a beefy-looking power strip. Okay, fine, don't need another one, but whatever.

Here's a photo of the stuff they shipped. Not shown are the small manuals and a wire replacement kit for the sealer.

Here's the drill. You put your DVD case inside a bag, set the impulse sealer to "2" on the dial scale, put the open end of the bag through the jaws so that about 1/2" of space is next to the DVD case, and press down the top lever. The electronics heat up a hidden wire for maybe 1/2 second, and a light goes out.. That's it. You remove the bag, unzip the excess bag end (it unzips away very nicely) and move to the heat gun.

Put the heat gun on "low" and while holding the bag up in the air by one corner, run the gun relatively slowly along two edges, about 6" away from the bag. The material miraculously squinches up as you go. Then hold the assembly by the opposite corner, and do the last two edges. Many times the shrinkage on the edges is enough to make for an attractive finished look, but if necessary, hit the front and back of the DVD box to tighten up the material there.

That's it! Your DVD and/or CD is now shrinkwrapped, and it looks very nice. Here's a photo of the edge of a CD case. Looks just like the ones you get in stores.

A couple of thoughts:

(1) Go easy on hitting the faces with the heat gun. Some wrinkles just don't want to come out, and if you apply heat a millisecond longer than necessary you get a hole in the shrinkwrap. Do it again.

(2) A hairdryer just can't cut it, at least the one I tried. It's rated at 1,800w, but it produces tons of warm air. The heat gun produces a modest amount of really hot air. Plus, the hair dryer racket will make you deaf.

(3) The CDs and miniCDs shrinkwrapped beautifully, with very clean edges and drum-tight faces. The DVD boxes don't come out quite as mirror-like on the faces, perhaps because of the soft plastic box overlay.

(4) You don't need to use bags; the conventional folded-over shrinkwrap material will work fine. It just means you will have to seal on more sides, that's all.

I should have done this years ago.