Somehow making a cassette tape is so much more artful than mailing tunes over aim or burning a disk that just gets re-burned to an ipod, but that time consuming trend died somewhere in the 80s & 90s. Still, we love to reminisce about our youth, and so for you detailed, artful, nostalgic lovers out there I have collected my 10 favorite pieces & places to carry on the memory of cassettes & mix tapes.

  1. Muxtape.com
    Upload songs to the web-site to create your own “mix tape”, or listen to the full mix tapes of others online. To show you how easy it is, I just spent an hour (there were hard decisions to make!) mixing a tape JUST FOR YOU. You can now find my tape at stickersanddonuts.muxtape.com.
  2. Digital Meets Analog Ipod Case
    If you’re going to betray analog, you might as well do it with the cover of classy analog style. 45ipodcases.com makes crafty ipod cases out of vinyl records and, of course, cassette tapes. You can even pick the exact cassette tape you want to encase your ipod in.
  3. Cassette Belt Buckles

    The pretty gold cassette buckle shown at the top of the pages was sold on Esty once upon a time. Now you can find cassette belt buckles lots of other places like the cool one (above, made from real cassette tape) from Honorable Mention or a silver belt buckle tape from Ooki.
  4. Cassette Tape Dispenser
    Cassette tape dispenser: the product speaks for itself.
  5. Makeamixa.com
    This is my favorite find of them all. On MakeAMixa.com you can create your own tape cover & sticker design. You can use their art, upload your own, or take photos directly from you flikr sets. When all the designing fun is over you can order your tape & easily grace it with whatever multi-media you want via the attached USB stick! (My design is shown above, but you can make your own design here.)
  6. Mixed Tape Merchandise
    You can buy this design on 42 different products from mouse pads to T-shirts to mugs on Timewarp’s Cafepress store.
  7. Cassette Tape MP3 Player (stand alone and for car)
    This fun little cassette is an “MP3 Player built into a standard cassette casing, letting you either use it as a uniquely old school shaped MP3 Player, or with any car cassette or cassette player to play MP3 Music.”
  8. Cassette Tape Wallet
    Every crafty cassette tape wallet is handmade and one of a kind. (Maybe that’s why they’re $40, though they certainly are cute & clever!)
  9. Cassette Tape Purse/Tote
    According to the web-site this $15 vinyl tote “has the look of a giant cassette tape, big enough to hold a pretty big portion of your CD collection, which would make you ironic like Alanis.”
  10. Mix Tape USB Stick
    If making a mixa is too much for you (in dollars, perhaps), then you can order a 64MB USB flash drive with a cassette case covering. It’s a good b-day or v-day gift (filled with pictures & music, of course).

If this top ten list doesn’t make you want to dig around for those old cassettes, hop on over to tapedeck.org where you can shuffle through tons of pretty cassette tapes. The site was “built to showcase the amazing beauty and (sometimes) weirdness found in the designs of the common audio tape cassette.” Then, if you’re still obsessed you can read Love is a Mix Tape: Life, and Loss, One Song at a Time (thought I hate to recommend a book I haven’t yet read, I just love the idea that the author uses mixed tapes — 22 of them — to describe his relationship with his late wife).

So get off of limewire (for a minute) and reminisce about the classy cassettes (or other spinning musical wheels) of your youth.

    Other Posts You Might Like:
  1. secretly a contemporary musical device!
  2. Win a lovely ipod case with extras!
  3. Favorite Posts Round Up
  4. Happy Birthday to Me!
  5. you’re invited to poster party 2xx8!