Vinyl Record Picture Frame

In a couple weeks I am going with my boyfriend to Colorado for Christmas with his family. Sounds fun right? Yes, but there is a small problem. I haven't mentioned this before but I am in college. As many of you know, college students don't have a lot of money. And so I need to be creative in my gift giving. I have to get presents, not only for him but for his parents, sister, and grandparents. For my next couple of posts I will share what I got each of them and how I did each of his families gifts for a very low price. 

I wanted to get them each something that I thought they would enjoy and something that I put some effort into to make unique to them. His grandparents LOVE records and I knew I wanted to make something with vinyl records for them for Christmas.                              

So my first stop was Goodwill where I found records for 99 cents! 

Next I had to come up with an idea and so I started searching the web where I found a website where you could buy picture frames made out of vinyl records. In an effort to save money, we decided to make our own. With some help from my boyfriend, we placed masking tape the size that we wanted and began cutting it with an exacto knife. This proved to be a lot harder than we thought. The record is very hard and doesn't cut easily so we tried several techniques to cut it. First we heated the knife and began cutting it. This worked okay but it was very hard to keep the knife hot enough long enough to do anything so we tried heating the record with a lighter and cut it while the vinyl was nice and moldable. This also worked but is very time consuming. The record is sometimes too flexible and stretches rather than cutting clean. This week we will be experimenting with different techinques to find the best way to cut it. (If you have an idea, feel free to comment!! :) We could use a little help!) 

This is the backside of our record. Although the cutting isn't the best and our last corner is still in tact, I have no doubt that with a little more cutting (and maybe a little better cutting strategy) we will have a wonderful vinyl record picture frame that they will love!