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.