DIY Faux Clock Face

When I saw this gallery wall in one of my Pottery Barn catalogs, I knew it would be the perfect solution to the big blank wall that sits behind the couch in our family room.

I love the incorporation of unexpected elements, like vintage clocks and mirrors 

in addition to the mixture of frames housing art & photos.

While I was perusing for goodies at Ruffles and Rust Square in Snohomish recently, 

I spied this rustic faux clock face.

I thought it would be a great starting point for our gallery wall…

but instead of buying it, I thought I’d try and recreate it myself.

So I ran to Lowe’s and picked up a 24″ circular piece of plywood.

 

After giving it a good sand-down to smooth it out, I applied 2 coats of stain-blocking primer.

Then I gave it two coats of semi-gloss white paint from Sherwin Williams.

I would have rather used a matte paint, but I wanted to try and use supplies I already had on hand at home and I knew I could sand the sheen off after the paint dried.

Which leads me to the next step, which was…

sanding.

Boy, do I love my mouse sander. 

One of the best gifts. Ever.

I wanted my clock to have a rustic, vintage look, so I roughed it up around the edges and tried to ding it up in random patches as well.

After doing a google search for roman numeral clock faces, I found the above image, which I printed off an blew up on our copier.

Once I was happy with the size of the numerals, I cut them out and taped them to my painted circle. Notice that I taped the smaller clock to the center to the board to use a guide for placement and also kept the arches above my numbers to help me space them evenly from the outside edge.

To transfer my numerals onto the clock, I used carbon paper {from Staples}, cut into little pieces and stuck behind my numbers. Then I simply traced the outline of the numbers with a ballpoint pen.

Using a combination of a black paint pen and a tiny paint brush with black acrylic paint, I filled in all of the numbers. This part was very time consuming!!

I used the same method for the lettering in the middle of the clock 

{which I copied from one of the Pottery Barn clocks}.

After getting some advice from my fabulous sister-in-law, I used a piece of twine tied to a pencil to draw the large circle onto my clock. To fill it in, I again used a tiny paint brush and acrylic paint.

For the radial lines between the numbers, I laid a ruler from the center point to the outside edge and just eye-balled it to make sure it was centered between each number.

 The next step was kind of a disaster because, well, I had no idea what I was doing.

I wanted to try and ‘glaze’ the clock to give it an antiqued look…

but I didn’t have any glaze nor had I ever used any in my life.

So I took some walnut stain that I had and spread it all over my clock.

Then I wiped and wiped and tried to get it all off.

It looked terrible.

It turned the whole clock brownish gray. I was so dissapointed.

So I sanded it all off, which also nearly took off all of my numbers and lettering.

Which meant, I had to repaint it all back on. Uuuuuugggghhhh.

I decided I would have to fork out a little money for some real glaze and enlist advice from someone who actually knew what they were doing.

After a trip to the hardware store and tons of questions answered by the sweet paint gal working there, 

I came home with some glaze and insight.

Attempt #2 worked like a charm.

Just rub a little on, rub a little off until you are happy with the result.

A great tip I was given was to keep a spray bottle with water handy, so that if your glaze gets too dark, you just spray some water on it and wipe it off.

 Once the glaze dried, I tapped in some bronze furniture nails {from Lowe’s} above each number for some added detail.

And last, I sprayed the whole thing with some flat, non-yellowing polyurethane to protect all of my hard work.

 

Linking up to: