Decorate a Record (Practice Round)

A colleague suggested I try decorating a record, and then handed me a bunch of them to play with. I tried painting directly on the record using craft paint, but it was almost too dark a background to make an impression. I’m sure a more vibrant/expensive paint would produce a better result. I liked working with the paint directly on the record, because the grooves show through. However, it took about a million coats before things started to look cool, so I tried another technique.

First I spray painted the record using white Krylon. Krylon clings directly to plastic without sanding, so it’s one of my favorite tools. Once the paint was dry, I began experimenting with layering tissue paper and Mod Podge. I used a tree die-cut (and the negative image it punched out) for one. On the other record, I added a bunch of tissue paper dots. Then I googled “lady silhouette”, printed the image, cut it out, traced it on tissue paper, and added that to the collage.

I prefer this technique, and this is the way I’d teach it if I decided to create a program around it. If it was for tweens, I’d also add rhinestones, beads, and other 3D texture to mix things up a bit.

The only major snag I hit was when I got overconfident with the little foam brush and tore the tissue paper. Then when I tried to fix it, the paper tore and became a gluey mess. All in all, a fun project. It could be very cheaply done if you know someone with a bunch of old records.