The other day I made a blog post about case making - specifically talking about the case for the upcoming Portraits series - but I also mentioned that I had been working on a case for these Chibies, and included a photo:

Let's investigate that case a bit closer. We're almost ready to begin production, and it wouldn't hurt to get a bit of feedback on the design before we start tooling up!

Here's how I think it might work (these are photos of that original prototype, so please excuse some of the roughness in the cutting, and the poor finish on the wood ...):

Here's the box in unopened form - just a simple little wooden box with a lid:

The lid is a friction fit, and just lifts off:

Not visible in these photos is the 'finger hole' in the base, through which you can push the contents upward, allowing you to lift off the top two items - a small board, and a matching piece of acrylic (these were sitting on a small shelf inside the box, and not pressing down on the prints below):

Nothing different in this photo, except that I have flipped over the lid ...

... which then goes back onto the box (after lifting out one of the prints, of course).

You know what happens next. The small board, the print, and the acrylic, all slide together into the slot in the lid:

And of course you can change the print on display any time you like:

Beautifully effective, and it couldn't be simpler, don't you think! I'm kicking myself for not thinking of this a year ago, back when the series was just getting under way.

I have already identified one problem with the system as you see it there. The prints - packed in the way that we have been shipping them for the past year - are a bit unprotected and free to slightly rub against each other in the bottom section of the box. So we're going to pack the individual prints in a slightly different way from now on, with a small folded paper, instead of the single loose sheet we have used so far. Each print will be protected against abrasion, and when it is needed for display, the paper just folds 'backwards' for going into the slot.

(For those of you who are panicking because you have already collected this series, will want this case, and yet don't have the 'correct' packaging, you can relax. The current thinking is that for any current collectors ordering this case we will of course include an 'empty set' of packages, and you can make the changeover yourself.)

As for the manufacture of these cases, I'm thinking that we will make them here in Ome (although not here in my workshop). We are currently having a sample of the Portraits case made for us by a friend of Jed's over in the States, but that series alone is probably going to be more than enough to keep him busy for the near future. For these boxes, we are talking to Tashiro-san - the retired gent who helped us get the workroom together over the past few months - about making them.

He 'stole' my sample a few days ago, and came back with his own version this morning. He hit it dead-on, and all we have to do is confirm the dimensions, and then give him the go-ahead to make some simple jigs, so that we can make a whole bunch of these in a batch.

I'm not ready to open up for orders yet, nor do I yet have a firm price, but it should be pretty reasonable, I think ... Watch this space for developments!