For the IndieWeb Carnival that I’m hosting, the theme chosen for the month of June is “DIY - Something From (Almost) Nothing”. Initially I wanted to remake and rebuild my desk into a giga-desk, but fell short of the task, for now. So I’m going to approach my favourite subject, music, to decorate a wall in my office using old records. I could have gone the “I made this” code route, but I really hoped that this month’s Carnival would take people out of their comfort zone, so I won’t choose the easy road.

Chapter 1: Inspiration

Already knowing in broad strokes what I wanted to do, I searched for various vinyl walls over the internet, but many of them are using covers, not the records themselves. The main issue is that sunlight will eventually make their colours fade and will eventually ruin the covers completely. While searching, I found a few nice setups and even a lot of sites that sell various record wall mounts.

• https://momitforward.com/vinyl-record-wall-art-diy/
• https://thevinylwall.com/
• https://raduluchian.com/creating-a-vinyl-record-wall-clock/

Making a quick count, I made a small inventory of the records I’m having:

• 12 LPs already done
• 11 LPs that will need to be re-labeled (and some painted)
• 12 singles (7") that will also require some labels

I did write on a facebook group to ask some people if they are selling some unwanted old crappy records, but at least in a fairly decent condition, regardless of their musical content, but in a visual state as good as possible. My good friend, Paul, contacted me and said he can send me about fifty, so this project will definitely expand outside my records room.

Chapter 2: Re-labeling and painting

Because most of the records are Romanian folklore music, I didn’t want to add them like this on the wall. This might work if you’re decorating a pub or a bar, but I’d want to add the labels of some of my favourite records.

The design for most of the labels were shamelessly stolen from Popsters, with some others from the internet, and printed them on my Epson L3250 printer, on auto-adhesive paper, so I won’t fuss with glue. I did some print runs on normal paper, for sizing purposes, cutting them roughly using scissors.

The label size for the 12" records are about 11mm in diameter, while the ones for the 7" singles are about 9.5mm. I decided to use some labels a bit bigger than the standard ones mostly because Electrecord used bigger labels themselves, so I need to completely cover those. I’ve seen countless of methods to put the records on the wall from wood frames, to centre pins, but I think I’m just going to stick with thick double-sided scotch tape.

Chapter 3: Layout

I’ve got the idea of painting the records from Cristi, a friend, who’s actually the source of the technological process and the catalyst for the idea, and who made the initial run of 12 discs, some of them painted. I’ll also try to paint some more, just to have them as a splash of colour here and there on the wall. I was thinking on some variants of patterns and I did some quick mockups in Photoshop to see how I’d like them and think I’ll keep the third one.

I was thinking of making a layout where the records are a bit spaced or aligned at an angle one from the other, but given the fact that the wall is about 150cm in width and the records themselves are 30cm, the math is simple and they are going to be placed side by side with only a small gap between them.

Chapter 4: The expected setback

Late at night you get the best ideas, even if they are putting a dent in your plan. The night before I was starting to add the records to the wall, I just thought of something. I know a lot of bands in Romania. I’ve known some of them for so long, I consider them friends, even brothers. So I will try to get some vinyl records signed from them and then add a relevant label to identify the signatures. I could have used their records, but these bands usually do small vinyl batches (2-300 units) and it would be a waste to break a perfectly working record. But this project will complement my desk build.

Chapter 5: The v1.0 result

Because I’ve got that nice idea to get signed records from my favourite bands, I’m going to make an initial wall as a proof of concept and I’ll change it gradually whenever I’m getting new records. I guess this will be a long time project, so I’ll keep you updated. I’ve initially tried a grid layout, even trying to align it using my projector, but wasn’t happy at all with the result, so I had to scrap all the layout and start from zero again with a quasi-random positioning. To fill the gaps between records, I added some 7" singles and wherever the space was too small, I added a few tape cassettes. Most of the records still have their original labels, until I find someone around with a cutter plotter so I can make some really nice labels, as manually cutting them yields shit results. I also have to fill in some gaps with some 10" records on the side. So without further ado, below you can find some nice images of the first version of the record wall that’s placed to the side of my desk.

Chapter 6: Slowly but surely progressing