Hickory Dickory Dock!

Hello crafters..

A new month beckons…and it’s already March! Can you believe we are 2 months up??? I am excites about the coming months as I am planning to give my 10yr old house a BIG makeover! Can you imagine the possibilities that open up for me as an “altered art” artist???

Am loving the thought of it and so I begin this month with my DT project for Rhedd’sCreative Spirit where it is always ANYTHING GOES but altered art or mixed media only. Isn't that fun.. I clubbed the 2 possibilities and came up with this “Hickory Dickory Dock” but only this time you have birds flying up and not the mouse, lol!

Have you guessed??? YES, it’s an altered wall clock…

How exciting is that…I have altered a boring wooden clock to suit the new color scheme of my house and that too using a lot of Tim Holtz products and techniques. What do we do without the master??? It’s amazing how things can be altered using his products and that is what you will be seeing soon…

I started by sanding the entire wooden clock after removing all the clock parts. Once the wax and gloss was removed, I applied 2 coats of gesso and patiently waited. This time it is a big project..3 feet tall…so I better be patient, lol!

Once dry I chose my new colors Distress stain in peacock feathers and applied randomly all over the clock and simultaneously added watered down gesso, to make it more chalky and applied all over the wooden parts.

Again, my patience tested as I had a good amount of coverage to be done…so 2 coats again with sanding in between. Once I was happy with the color tone, I applied rock candy distress crackle paint in random parts and applied walnut stain distress stain in the cracks.

Also weathered down the clocks by sanding the edges to reveal a bit of the wood and also inked in many places with walnut stain to give it the “antique look”…it is a 20 year old clock, anyways(gifted for my wedding)!

The next stage was to take up TH stencils in cargo and I applied homemade texture paste and as it was wet, sprinkled some fine glitter on it. Voila, as the texture dried, it also started sparkling!

Once the outer of the clock was ready, I moved to the inside makeover. I am finally gathering up courage to tear up papers from TH wall flower paper pack, but only 1 sheet for a project lol! Here I managed 2, cos I knew I would be looking at this clock every day and would have a chance to admire the papers too, lol!

I fussy cut the floral patterns from one page and the birds from the other and distressed the edges and modge podged the floral patterns on the shadow box portion of the clock.

To my delight, I had a big shadow box to play with and since this is a battery operated clock, the pendulum is actually a static piece which means I can work on it too!

Once the flowers were in place, I gathered some twigs from the garden and applied picket fence D Stains to it and made a little “platform” for the birds to perch on! I stuck the twigs to the length of the pendulum and had the birds sitting on it!

For the round portion of the pendulum, I had some pattern papers stuck with modge podge and then stamped this wonderful quote from Paper Artsy on tissue and flaunted it as the focal piece there…very true isn’t it ???

Now comes the clock face…I just die cut a crclr to suit the size of the face using the same PP and inked the face with alcohol inks in matching colors. You see a blue/green and brown in the edges??A closer look at the inside and you will find the secret date of our wedding day…after all it is a reminder of our wedding, you see!

I still had a lot of space inside the clock and so built a lovely BIG nest with loots of coconut coir tucked in and perched a little bird there with an egg too! So you see a lot of birds here and not the mouse!

Embellishment time…my most enjoyable part of ant 3D project and this time I wanted to make some different flowers. I decided to do some cabbage roses using left over PP from my stash and followed every step of the talented “flower queen” ( I am sure many of you will agree) Jennie of Live The Dream. You have to see her amazing flower tutorials and see how your project comes to life with those beauties. Thanks Jennie for being an inspiration! I just love the look of these flowers on my clock, just PERFECT. This such a lovely idea to use up scraps.

The flowers are all made using TH tattered florals die. I assembled the flowers with some chip board branches from Creative Embellishments which I painted with picket fence D Stains too.The leaves are using TH tattered flowers and Die nemics die. One more bird tucked in here, waiting to get inside…

Isn't it cute???

I loved how the entire thing shaped up and for the impatient soul in me, this was a true test! This project took me 3 days with all the drying time that I dint speed up!

Now I have Huge satisfaction of altering a mega project  and it proudly hangs on the wall now bringing memories of our wedding! Though the walls still wears the old look, in a couple of months, it will be a perfect fit to the new colors up in the wall!

Thank you so much for your patience too, reading every bit of my makeover process and would love to hear your comments. I just love reading every bit of and can’t thank you all enough for that.

You are going to see more makeover projects and home décor projects from me in the coming months . Hope this inspires you to play along and would love to see your wonderful projects out at Rhedd’s Creative Spirit this month.

I would like to have my Wall clock enter the following challenges…

A Vintage Journey - Special numbers ( wedding anniversary here!)

Stampartic- special day

Artist Trading post- Alphabet soup

Decorate to Celebrate- Anything Goes

Crafting for all Seasons- Dies/ punches

Simon says Monday Challenge - Anything Goes
City Crafter Challenge Blog- Use it Up- have used paper scraps for the cabbage roses
Mixed Media Monthly Challenge- Birds of a feather
Natalie and Amie Challenge Blog - Flowers
BGC- Mixed Media

Until my next Creative Journey,

Happy Crafting and Re cycling.

Big Hugs.