The Art of Multitasking

Today I've been running a couple of projects at the same time. The big one - cabinet painting in the bathroom - is underway and I'll fill you in on the details when I'm finished tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought I'd show off my clever clock work.

I have this clock that I bought several years ago to match my old decor. Rather than buy a new clock, I decided I could just use this one by changing out the face. Step one, of course, was to take the whole thing apart. Luckily, the front was just held on by four little screws. Once those were removed, it was easy enough to unscrew the hand and remove the battery operated mechanism from the back. The face itself is a heavy-weight paper (like vinyl wallpaper) with the image and numbers printed on it.

Once I had the whole thing apart, I carefully removed the printed face (which was held in place by hot glue) so I could use it as a template for the new insert.

After I traced around the whole circle, I cut off the edge with the time markings to use as a guide when I put the new numbers on the new clock face.

This is the gift bag (from Dollar Tree) I used for the face. It was a little shy on width, but once I cut it open, the sides added plenty of space to trace the full circle. Since I only used one side of the bag for this project, I have another pretty image to save for something else (like another painted box).

Here's the circle including the sides of the gift bag. It didn't want to lie flat at first, so I grabbed my old iron and pressed the back of the paper. (The front has a waxy finish that I though might melt. In addition, I have an old iron dedicated to crafting because I wouldn't want to mess up my husband's good one!)

Here's the finished product. I had some trouble coming up with the numbers and finally used scrap booking stickers since the ones designated for clock faces had limited choices. (Read only one choice here - too small and too light to show up against this background.) I originally planned to use Roman numerals but couldn't find any and was too lazy to print them and cut them all out. Thus, stickers seemed the best option.

Overall, I thought this was an inexpensive way to refurbish my kitchen clock. I paid one dollar for the gift bag and two dollars for the stickers. Now, let's hope I put it all back together correctly and it continues to work well!