DIY Clock

I’ve made a clock before, but we had to leave it behind when we moved (sad). It wouldn’t have matched our new house, we didn’t want to deal with patching the wall, and I had another blank wood round. So behind it stayed, and I finally found the time and inclination to make the new one.

Materials

This list got really long...

• Wood round - I got mine at Home Depot

• Cricut

• Stencil vinyl and transfer paper

• Clock face template (printed)

• Matte Mod Podge

• Acrylic paint in the colors I needed - black, blue, white

• String - I used crochet thread, as I needed quite a long string

• Hammer and nail (1)

• Glitter paint, because everything needs to have glitter

• Handheld drill with a drillbit that fits the clock kit spindle

• Clock kit - I got mine on Amazon. i had learned from the first clock that the the spindle needed to be as long as possible - the wood round is 1.5” thick and I wanted the clock mechanism to be flush with the back of the clock.

• Chalk

• A Dremel, or some way to carve out a cavity on the back of the clock for the battery/mechanism

• Eyelet screws

• Nylon string

Method

• I painted the wood round black using acrylic paint. Did a couple coats.

• While it was drying, I cut numbers out of stencil vinyl with the Cricut. After weeding out the numbers themselves so I had a stencil, I used transfer paper on the numbers that had multiple pieces (4, 6, 8, 9, and 10).

• I also printed a clock face and cut it out.

• Using string and significant educated approximation, I located the center of the round and hammered a nail in about 1/4”.

  • I made an X on the round with string

  • Measured from the center out to make sure each line segment was the same length

  • Measured a few other distances around from the center to make sure it measured the same

  • Tweaked the string as necessary

  • Hammered in the nail

  • Put the center of the clock template over and through the nail

  • Taped it down

  • Removed the string

• Next is basically string art using the nail and the clock template.

  • Taped an end of string on the back

  • Wrapped the string around to the nail, going through the center of the thick black mark for the 12

  • Wrapped the string around the nail, reversing direction and wrapping the string around the back of the round, going through the center of the thick black mark for the 1

  • Kept doing that

  • For the last number (6, in this case), I tied off the string around the nail without securing the string to the round so that I had a free length of string at the end that I could use for the last number, but also in case I needed it to measure anything else around the clock face (spoiler alert: I did).

    • In the picture below, the string across number 6 is my last one - I taped it in place to keep it still.

• Using chalk to “color” the string, I snapped a chalk line to mark where the number stencils needed to go.

• One by one, I moved each string out of the way, placed the stencil. and then moved the string back.

• I used a straightedge to make sure the numbers lined up across from each other as well.

• After A LOT of repositioning, I was finally happy with the placement, and removed the strings.

• Time to paint. I used a sponge brush and acrylic paint, and dabbed the paint on. Dabbing paint on stencils helps ensure that the lines are crisp when you pull the stencil up.

• I pulled the stencils up as I went - it’s better to remove stencils when the paint is wet/semi wet so that the stencil doesn’t pull up the edge of the paint too.

• Remember how I said something earlier about crisp lines? Yeah, well….

• It would’ve been worse if I didn’t do the dab method…at least that’s what I’m telling myself. To fix this, I used a small paintbrush with black paint.

• I also took this opportunity to use glitter paint on the 12, 3, 6, and 9. Because I love glitter.

• Fixed

• I did a coat of matte mod podge here

• After the mod podge dried, I used the drill to go through the center of the clock.

• On the back of the clock, I put the spindle through the hole, and then traced around the clock mechanism to know where I needed to carve out a cavity

• Using the dremel, I carved out a space for the clock mechanism to fit into the clock and give the spindle enough threads on the front of the clock for the nut to go on

• Following the instructions on the kit, I assembled the clock.

• All done!