craftgrrl | hooray for record bowls! (Reply)

so easy to make! I assume the method is pretty well known... but... here are the instructions anyway...

Heat your oven up to 300 C. Place the record on top of a bowl placed on top of a cooking sheet. Center that record perfectly (although, of course, it's not so important). Let it sit in the oven anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. The record will generally melt into a four-pinched specimen.... but I've seen them go anywhere from three to many folds. It depends on the quality of the record itself. After the record has softened... you can take it out, perfect the pinches a little more or, when comfortable, mold the record into a shape more to your choosing (although it doesn't tend to stray far from what it softened to). It cools quickly, and the result is awfully nice.

Look out for the quality of the record. The hard, thick shiny ones make the best quality ones, as they tend to form into bowls nicely and don't show signs of the heat. The less shiny records tend to create cool folds (folding numerous times on themselves in the folds)... but they tend to show signs of heat and look a little less impressive. If you have a somewhat flimsy, thin record, those are great for the multi-fold bowls (one shown above)... put them on a bowl that is a little taller (more cylindrical)... and let that puppy go! It's really good to coax the multi-folds along in this case.

Have fun!