Upcycled Crafts: Rolled Vinyl = new keychains for our bathroom keys!

With one last Friday before we officially have Laura back on the Craft Blogs (yay!), here is a follow up to the guest post from APL Employee and fabulous Media dude, Paul.

 

Supplies:

Vinyl records, the thinner the better—and make sure they’re not records anyone wants to listen to anymore!

Solar Reflector (optional)

CAUTION! The most important thing to be said about melting records is that Vinyl (PVC) is toxic, especially when heated.   Never melt records in your oven.  Don’t eat from bowls used in melted record crafts, and use gloves when handling hot vinyl.

We melt records using a solar reflector made from discarded CDs.  Even in late August (when these crafts were made), Texas heat lends itself very nicely to record-melting. Today’s crafts are a display bowl and giant keychain for Recycled Reads’ bathrooms.  We heat the records on a piece of metal (the container for a reel of 16mm film) placed under the focus of our curved reflector.  Now, you may not have a container for a real of 16mm film lying around, but be resourceful!

The sunned records become flexible after a few minutes, but must be shifted around like a pizza to heat evenly.  For the display bowl, we place the floppy record over a bowl and push it in.  We weighed it down and placed it back under the reflector to try and get it as bowl-shaped as possible, but once the record is no longer on a hot surface it’s hard to get it any softer.

For the key holder, we rolled the soft records, and placed the ends of the rolls back under the focus to soften them up before pounding a hole with a nail.