Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Melted Record Bowls

Now, these are just the beginning of some great works of art, but I was just too anxious to post these :)  I had melted these before school yesterday morning so my Art Club students could work on painting them and getting them ready for the Fine Arts Fair in two weeks.

First of all, to melt a record, you need to preheat your oven to 200 degrees, put the record on top of an oven proof glass bowl so when it heats up, it will slump over the bowl.  As soon as you see the record melting, take it out of the oven and let it cool.  At this point, you can carefully mold it into whatever shape you want to.  You have to work quickly b/c as soon as it cools, it's permanently in that shape - unless you re-melt it, of course.  It only takes about 5 minutes to melt and 2 minutes to cool, so it's a quick process.  I put two bowls in my oven at a time, so within 30 minutes I had 18 bowls ready to be painted.

From experience, I can tell you that these will turn out beautifully if you spray paint them with a coat of white primer before using acrylics on them.  Most of the acrylic paint won't show up well at all on a black surface, so to ensure vibrancy, I would recommend priming them first.




4 comments :

  1. Oh, SO COOL!!!! These really ROCK! Very Chihuly, yes? Any strange fumes when they are heating up?

    Where do you find your vinyl that you want to melt? (I have tons of old record albums but I wouldn't melt any of them!)

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  2. This lesson made the Weekly Top Twenty best art lessons over at The Art Fairy. Come by and pick up your button if you get a chance. Great lesson!

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  3. This looks so fun! I am going to try with my art campers this summer. I found albums at my local thrift store for 75 cents apiece.

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