I've done this. I burnt 2 CDs last year and 3 CDs last month in iTunes. There are more tricks to know than just pressing the "Burn" button.
1) Go iTunes > File > New Playlist to make a playlist of more or less 20 songs. iTunes will tell you if they will all fit on a 700 MB/80 minute CD-R disc. Each song is about 5 MB on your hard drive, so 20 songs is 100 MB, but for some reason that I don't know of, a 700 MB/80 minute CD-R only holds about 100 MB worth of music?
2) iTunes did sell me one song with a spelling mistake that I only noticed after I printed off my iTunes CD cover, so now is the time to carefully check all the spellings. If there is a mistake, correct it by going Playlist > song with spelling mistake > right-click > Get Info > Info > type/paste in correct spelling > OK, and tell the iTunes Store to correct their website.
3) Find out what your computer can burn before you even buy the discs (usually this its marked on the front of your CD drive) because new computers like my 6 month old HP computer have Lightscribe technology to burn designs and text on the top of the disc itself. CD-RW discs can be erased and reburnt; however, they are not compatible with all standard CD players like CD-Rs. Most people use CD-Rs no problem.
You should check out my Lightscribe link below because it is pretty cool, and it is definitely worth it to find a friend with a new computer equipped with Lightscibe technology (Labelflash is similar, but I haven't used it); otherwise, you will end up using a felt pen to label your disc or worse stickers that could come off or make the disc unbalanced as it turns. To use Lightscribe technology, you would need a Lightscribe CD drive, a Lightscribe program, and special Lightscribe CD-Rs, all of which have the Lightscribe logo.
4) Place your regular CD-R or Lightscribe CD-R in the drive, and press--
STOP RIGHT THERE!
If you press "Burn Disc" followed by "Burn" now, your audio CD and any mp3 files ripped from it might have no song information or CD cover art even if you bought it from iTunes because the "Include CD text" option is left unchecked by default in iTunes. Why is such a feature unchecked by default (sic)? Good question considering how time consuming and error prone typing/pasting all the song information is.
Another option to get the song information if you didn't want to make a CD, is go iTunes > right click each individual song > Create MP3 Version. You will get mp3 versions with all the song information and CD cover art.
Okay, so to burn CD text onto your audio CD, place your regular CD-R or Lightscribe CD-R in the drive, and press "Burn Disc" in the lower right corner of iTunes. In the "Burn Settings" window make sure the "Include CD text" option is checked, then press "Burn". It should take about 5 minutes. This will be an Audio CD, and iTunes will rip the songs from an Audio CD into the mp3 format instead of the iPod format, if you need that as I do. Also the Audio CD will play in any standard CD player even though the iTunes videos I bought will not burn onto a regular DVD due to DRM.
5) If you have Lightscribe, turn the Lightscribe CD-R over to burn a design and text on the top of the Lightscribe CD-R, which takes my computer about 25 minutes. Use your CD labeling program or the Lightscribe website to choose a design template. iTunes for now doesn't provide Lightscribe templates. You should be able to import all the song information from your song files. For now Lightscribe CD-R templates are monochrome, but the discs come in 6 colors. Lightscribe can burn JPEG images onto the disc also, with or without a Lightscribe template using multiple burns. You may have to fade the image to write over it. The program I use to do this is free to everyone, Openoffice.org's Writer program, which can set the transparency of any picture from 0 - 100 %. Then I use M.S. Snipping Tool to save a JPEG or if you don' t have Snipping Tool, you can go "Print Screen" & paste and crop the picture in M.S. Paint, and save it as a JPEG there. M.S. Paint can't fade pictures; I tried, but a color inversion might have a similar effect. To read in depth how I used Lightscribe, go to my epinions review at: http://www1.epinions.com/review/CyberLink_LabelPrint_for_PC/content_463366622852 . To see the Lightscribe CD label I burnt for my iTunes CD go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26170476@N08/2859067065/in/photostream/ .
6) IMPORTANT HINT for making CD cover: go iTunes > Playlist > File > Print, and iTunes will print you a great CD cover that you just cut out, and fold in two. iTunes fades the front CD cover image onto the back with all the song information. If you are making a mix CD, iTunes will make a collage out of all the CD covers your music comes from. You can see the iTunes CD cover I had printed at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26170476@N08/2859066943/ .
iTunes will even print a CD cover from a) an imported CD or b) from a playlist combining competitor sites' mp3 purchases & my iTunes purchases or burn & rip the music together. iTunes still won't accept my puretracks.com WMA DRM song files at all. Puretracks.com like many legal music sites sells music in either WMA or mp3 or both formats, so I'll have to do a separate burn for my WMA DRM song files with Windows Media Player, rip the songs into mp3 (No DRM with mp3), import them back into iTunes and then print the CD cover in iTunes that way.
I can't use iTunes to print a CD cover if the however large iTunes music library has no records of my hard to find music in which case I would have to make my own CD cover using my labeling program and/or OpenOffice.org's Writer program. Many other legal music sites don't give you a free high resolution CD cover, which is why it took me 2 hours to make my own CD cover using my Cyberlink Labelprint program.
If you don't have a labeling program, you can go to CNET's http://www.download.com or http://www.lightscribe.com/index.aspx > "Trial Software Dowloads", and try one for free, but the ones I saw leave watermarks on the printouts unless you buy the full version. If you are burning CD labels or printing CD stickers, you need a CD labeling program; however, if you are happy using a felt pen on a CD-R, you can make your own CD cover using the free Openoffice.org's Writer program. In landscape mode, I was able to place the front and the back of my CD cover side by side and type titles over them. This would print out like the iTunes CD cover that you just fold in half. I show one of my homemade CD covers with all the steps at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26170476@N08/2450374434/in/set-72157604784024179/ .