You spin me right round . . .

Haha!  So,  think I I mentioned last blog that I'd been playing with vinyl, and what I've mostly discovered is that vinyl cannot not look cool.  It just exudes cool.  It sweats cool out of it's pores like the weird oily stuff that the soles of my boxed-up-from-college shoes were covered in when I found them last week (ew).

So, having made some heat-deformed vinyl bowls and some cake stands for my Dad's party (which Mum has vamoosed back to their house), I've gone back to eBay and ordered a bit more vinyl and some fixings to make some more.  I'm thinking they'd be decent market-stall fodder if nothing else, so I might make a little pocket money if I'm lucky.

I had a spare twenty minutes this morning whilst Little B was napping and Madam was watching Doctor Who again (Easter holidays, so I'm on full time Mummy duty), so I snuck out to the studio and had a little experiment on the plastic bowls I bought from Tescos last night . . . I bought some clear ones and some brightly coloured ones . . .

As you can see, the experiment was to see how they behaved when I used the soldering iron on them.  This is a crafty hexperiment for a Well Ventilated Area, 'k?  The plastic from the hole area melts a bit, and burns/evaporates a bit, so if you're having a go yourself Be Safe!

Now why, I hear you ask, would I need to make a hole in a bowl?  Well you see, vinyl records are remarkably flat.  If I made a cupcake stand with a flat record on the very bottom, not only would it be less impressive as a display, the record would create a vacuum when you tried to pick the stand up from the table - not a great plan if it's covered in cupcakes!  So I needed something to raise the bottom record up, which could be bolted into the cupcake stand fixings - a bowl with a hole!

So the bowl sits upside-down against the lowest record, and gets washered and bolted together -

Then you need another washer and the second record -

Then another washer, and this time a single for the top tier, and the handle fitting for the top of the stand.

Ta-daaah!

Now it's worth remembering if you make any of these yourself, that the vinyl that records are made out of is not tested for food safety, and also the paper labels won't react well to washing-up liquid, so I'd reccommend decent cupcake cases . . .  or rock-n-roll doilies . . . my Mum found some circular cake-tin liners which sat nicely inside the bowls we made, making them safe for crisps or pretzels!  If you're going to use one as a fruit bowl, I guess fruit that you peel would be just fine, but use your own judgement.