Recycled records.

Yesterday was my first day back at classes. It was...interesting. I survived my first day of public speaking class, although my hands were shaking when I had to get up in front and tell about myself. I didn't have classes today, and I only have one tomorrow, but since we had snow last night and it's doing a little something now, I hope I won't have to go tomorrow! :)

I spend my day working on a couple of different projects. One was the book handbag. It started off well, and I'm thinking, wow, this is easy! Ha. Then came the last step-gluing everything together at once. It was a nightmare. I'm going to let it sit overnight and then do some touch-ups tomorrow, but I'm hoping it'll still turn out okay. But more on that later. :)

I also decided that I'm going to join Casey's (of Elegant Musings) Swing Dress Sew-Along. :) It runs through the end of February, so surely I can make a dress in a month and a half! I'm really excited...one of my goals last year was to make a dress that fit me properly. Well, I ended up not making any dress at all. So maybe I'll accomplish that this year. I've been admiring the 40s swing dress pattern at Sense and Sensibility Patterns for a while now. I'm planning on purchasing the e-pattern, as it's less expensive that way.

I also did another craft project, which was incredibly easy and fun. This morning, I stumbled across a tutorial for making bookends out of albums, which I haven't tried yet. That tutorial led me to this one: making record bowls. I decided to try it...and look!

These are seriously very fun and easy! Here's what you do:

1. Turn the oven on 200 degrees.

2. Get a cookie sheet, and put an oven-safe bowl on it upside down. My bowl was about 7 inches in diameter.

3. Put the record on top of the bowl, centered. The side that's facing up should be the side that you want to be on the bottom of the bowl.

4. Set a timer for five minutes and watch the record begin to go limp after just a few minutes!

5. Take everything out of the oven. Flip the bowl and the record right side up and slide the record into the bowl. This way you can shape the ripples however you want them to look. You can touch the record pretty much as soon as it comes out of the oven! It's warm, but not nearly as hot as the bowl (use an oven mitt when messing with that and the cookie sheet). Still, be careful!

6. When the record is starting to cool, slide it out of the bowl, making sure that it holds it shape. All done!

It was so much fun that I went a little overboard and made three. :) They're so quirky! I'm hoping to use at least two of them on my table at the community market this summer to display my items. It'll definitely keep with the vintage theme.

One record was from a "My Fair Lady" Broadway soundtrack, because I had two of those records. The other two were in a rock music set that someone gave me.

I guess I should have checked their value before melting them down. Oops. :)

Until next time,