New Years Clean Up - Recyled Records Tutorial

One of my goals for the New Year is to go through my enormous list of favorites and clean it up.  There are literally hundreds of items in my favorites and at this point I could not tell you most of what is in there.  But, at one point it was all something that I thought was great enough to bookmark.  So, I am going to go item by item through my favorites and throw out things that I have already made or blogged about and write up some posts about some of the real treasures in there.

This first post is a great little project I found on etsy.  I have made dozens of things from old records, bowls, cuff bracelets, earrings, guitar picks, purses, etc.  I found this idea and have been wanting to make one for my mom. 

This is actually a cookbook stand crafted from two records.  You can purchase this item from etsy seller RetiredRecords.  I think that they are $25.00.  You can actually watch a video on metacafe to see how to create your own record bowl (if you haven't already made one).  It is pretty simple.  Bending the records in a more artistic and directed way takes more skill and time.  Basically you need a piece of metal you can heat up - like a giant nail you use on rail road ties or a piece of metal pipe and an oveglove.  I heat up the pipe in the oven and then place it on the record.  Then, you can slowly bend the record up around the metal object.  You may need to reheat your metal pipe multiple times to get just the right effect.