I Melted a Record

This is Lucius. I've had him since he was a tiny little pet plant, but now he's starting to look like a proper cactus.

Lucius needs a new pot. He's not outgrown this one (obviously) but it is made of paper and it seems that the pin holes that I made for draining when I water him get clogged up too easily.
I've wanted to play with melting vinyl records for a while, so thought this would be a pretty good excuse.

I have read that it is possible to do this with a hairdryer. Possible, but time-consuming. Well, I did this with a hairdryer and it took about 20 minutes (although I suppose it is a small record).

I chose to use a hairdryer because I thought I might have more control over the way it moulds. Most of the bowls I've seen online look quite shallow, and I want to make more of a pot than a bowl, meaning I need the edges of it to be quite steep. 

At first I wasn't sure I did have much more control over it, really. With a hairdryer, you can only heat one part at a time; when you move to another area, the first part starts to cool down, and it lifts back up in the process. I imagine this wouldn't happen if the whole thing were equally pliable.

I soon learned that once one area was supple enough, I only needed to hold that part in place for about 10 seconds while it cooled a little for it hold its shape. Then I would turn the hairdryer back on and move to another spot.

So I kept going round and round, stopping every minute or so to hold it in position for a few seconds, until I had a shape I was happy with. It did get quite hot; at some points it was hurting my fingers too much but I found a drinks can on the floor (yes, I'm an untidy person) and used that to hold the record down. When I'd finished, I took it off its cup, and it looked like this:

And here is Lucius in his new home.