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1 Preheat your oven to 200F. Place the bowl upside down on the baking sheet, and pop the record on top of the bowl. Slide that baby into the oven.
2 Let it sit in the oven for about five minutes, until the record is starting to droop. Don't leave it in the oven too long, as the plastic will start to give off nasty, bad-for-you fumes.

3 Pull it out of the oven and start molding the bowl straight away. You can flip the bowl over, pop in the record, and use the bowl as a basic mold to make your record bowl, well, bowl-shaped. Alternatively, go free-form and just use your hands and fingers to sculpt your bowl into shape (this is how I prefer to do it). Be warned that the vinyl cools off amazingly quickly, and you might find it setting into shape before you're done fiddling around with it. Should this happen, do not force the plastic to do anything it doesn't want to do. Just stick the record and bowl back into the oven for a few minutes, until the record's again warm enough to manipulate.

4 Once you have your bowl shaped to your satisfaction, let it sit for about ten minutes or so to fully harden. Use your record bowl as a fruit bowl, gift basket, whatever. Or pour some soil into it and pop in a little plant -- just add a saucer to the bottom, and you have yourself a nifty planter.

Extra credit: If you don't like the record's original label or want to hide that hole in the center, you can create your own circular 4" label and glue it into place.

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