I got the idea to make these little bowls a few years ago when I bought Mark Montano’s book, the Big-Arse Book of Crafts

. (Mark Montano is the most brilliant crafter around– I love his books and his projects.) One bowl I made sits on my dresser and holds little hair knickknacks, and I gave a few bowls away, but I never got around to writing a tutorial about it.

To make a vinyl record bowl you need:

-Real bowl (One that can go in the oven.)

-A vinyl record (I chose some polka records because I liked their colors. Also, I love the word “Polka.”) 🙂

-An oven

This project is so easy and fun. The first thing you need to do is turn on your oven to about 350 degrees. Then you take your record and your bowl and rest them inside the oven once it has heated up a bit. Wait until the record starts to warp a bit and then take it out of the oven.

After you take it out of the oven, just press the record down into any bowl or shape that you want. You can make a square record bowl, an oblong record bowl, whatever you want. I got my best results when I used a glass mixing bowl– the height of the bowl made the sides of the record curl up really nice when I stuck it in there.

Hold your record in place inside the bowl until it hardens again.



(My favorite one.)

And that’s it!

You can keep whatever you want in these bowls, I think I am going to take mine to work and put them on my desk. I have a bit of a Post-It/knickknack organization problem… These might help. 😉