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Record Baking Recipe for a Flower Pot: It really works!
Sandy Ryan turns old vinyl into beautiful flower pots with an oven and a concept.

By Sandy Ryan

This recipe is more fun than a pair of pet monkeys. The smell takes me back to the 1970's summer afternoons I spent baking shrinky-dinks. Although the product is inedible, everything else about this recipe is appetizing. The price varies but I find my records for $.25 or $.50 at yard sales. The cooking time is only five minutes. Best of all is the strange quality the record takes on after a few minutes in the oven. The record becomes malleable but not too hot too handle. It cools to hard very quickly, but you can pop it back in the oven and try again if you don't like the shape. I usually want to spend hours on this quick project because it's so fun.

1. The first and most important step is choosing which records to melt. I recommend that you stay out of your own collection. The first album I ever bought was Donny and Marie's Hawaiian hit, "Goin' Coconuts" and although I never pull it out, I'm just glad to know it's there-- like a marker of the distance I have come, or a potential instrument of torture to use on the houseguests who won't leave. I would advise shopping at a thrift store or garage sale and melting someone else's memories. The best idea is to find a record that is scratched up and un-listenable anyway. I really like using colored records.

2. Get some potting soil and choose seeds, seedlings or potted plants. I go to the nursery and get cheap colorful flowers that are already blooming. This way, you'll not only get instant gratification, but you are immediately ready to give your record flowerpot as a gift.

3. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees.

4. Start by placing the record on top of an oven-safe bowl that is upside down. You may want to place the bowl on top of a cookie sheet for ease moving it in and out of the oven. I like using a bowl that is approx. 10 inches across the top and 4.5 inches across the base for standard size albums.

5. Bake for 5 minutes. If you find the thick old records made of "unbreakable vinylite" make sure to add a couple minutes to the baking process. However, if the thick records you find are really old, you should watch them carefully. There is some vinyl that becomes sticky and wrinkly when heated. Check on your album after a couple minutes if it is thick and old.

6. Your record should now be flexible but not too hot to handle. Check this with a quick touch of the fingertip. The bowl and cookie sheet will get hotter than the record so make sure you use a potholder when moving them. Pull the record off the bowl and quickly flip the bowl over and push the record down into it. Manipulate the sides to get it the shape you want.

7. Let the record cool in a larger bowl so the bottom is narrow from the first bowl but the sides can spread out a bit wider. It only takes a couple minutes for the record to get firm. Pull it out of the bowl. If you don't like the shape you can retry steps 4-6 as many times as you like. If you reheat the record it won't fit on top of your original bowl. Just put it in a larger bowl until it's pliant.

8. Decorate the outside of your flowerpot with paint or leave it plain. For black records, I like to add some color with enamel paint. You can find this paint at a hardware store or sold as model paint at a craft store. If you decide to use paint you may want to consider the flowers you will pot in it when choosing your color scheme.

9. Pot a plant in there or throw in some dirt & seeds. The record has a natural drain, the hole for sticking it on the turntable.

10. Celebrate some of your surviving music by playing it loud and dancing around the kitchen.