Tick tock you don't stop

Oooooo, ooh ooh ooh ooooh ooh...

Get your minds out of the gutter. There wasn't a more fitting title than this- filthy school bus lyrics and all. Ah, the 7th grade...


I'm sure by now you have all seen this clock in the Pottery Barn catalog:



Love it. LOVE it.

Naturally, it's not for sale. None of the awesome accessories in their rooms ever are, are they?... but I guess if it did have a price tag on it, it would be somewhere in the four hundred and gimmeabigfatbreak range, which is just beyond my decor budget this week. So I decided I could make my own.

HMMPH.

And I totally did. Be prepared to be amazed. ;)

Lots of gratuitous clock pictures to follow. No actual time-telling is involved.


First, I went to the hardware store to pick up some wood and roamed around for about 20 minutes looking for some guy in an apron to cut it down to size for me. After running into another lady and her daughter who were looking for the same aproned man, I got a little peeved and started shouting down the aisle at a group of workers who clearly had nothing better to do than lean on the customer service counter at the front of the store. No way was I gonna walk the length of a football field carrying an 8x4 piece of wood just to tap some guy in an apron on the shoulder and then walk all the way back to the community saw when my lungs would do the job just fine. The other lady was very appreciative and I think it's safe to bet that I'm that little girl's newest role model. Just doing my part.


Back home, I set up shop in front of the TV (watched My Sister's Keeper.. totally cried all over my art project, but it was worth it) and got to painting.


I scrounged around in the garage for whatever paint we had on hand and mixed up a light, creamy color to start. I've also been hitting up the mismatched paint section whenever I go to Home Depot or Lowe's for small cans of colors I like and can mix. I highly recommend this. Just a little crafty tip from me to you.

My next layer was a little lighter and watered down, for a slightly white-washed look to age it up a bit.


I didn't take any pics of the next step, but I used a box cutter and a flathead screwdriver and hammer to gouge little cracks in the grain of the wood. Then I got out some craft paint in brick red, yellow and a wrought iron gray color. I read another blog post somewhere along the line of a lady who also made this clock, and all I can remember is that she used red and yellow paint to create the rusted look in the cracks, so I thought I should too. I wasn't loving the ketchup and mustard look, so I rubbed the color using a rag just barely dipped in water to tone it down a bit. Then I went in with the blue/gray for some more dimension.


On to the numbers! I printed out an X, V and two I's to do all the numerals. I used a push tack and a piece of string to lightly draw the outer circle and line up where each numeral should go. I just lightly painted in the numerals with a black/gray paint mix and didn't worry about getting it too perfect.

Looking good! But she needed a little more aging, so I busted out the glaze:

Ahhh, much better!

Here she is in her new home in the dining room:

Don't mind my dead plants.. I can't keep a plant alive to save my life.

You like??