If you read our St. Patrick’s Day and Easter craft column, you may remember that we found some wonderful, inexpensive clocks – suitable for creating one-of-a-kind timepieces – at the Dollar Plus store in Arlington.
| Plain masks in various styles
Specialty feathers, faux butterflies and silk-flower leaves Rhinestones, beads and sequins Hot-glue gun |
We were so excited to find these little treasures that we bought a bunch of them, used one to make a St. Paddy’s Day clock and dressed up two more in Easter finery.
In this week’s Craft Corner, we offer a few more suggestions for decorating our clocks, this time using decorative papers, stones and some canceled stamps and stickers.
For our first two clocks, we checked out the scrapbook section at Craft Mart in Marysville and found a couple of themed kits for $9.99 each.
The kits contained a variety of decorative papers, as well as some beads, stones and other embellishments, all in an African theme.
Some of the papers were already cut as frames, so we needed to cut them down to fit the face of the clock, and once the necessary adjustments were made, putting the design together was a simple matter.
We used wider bands of paper as the base and glued them in place with quick-dry tacky glue.
Next, we added narrower bands of paper in contrasting colors and glued them in place as above.
Since many of these decorative papers are textured, it’s necessary to hold them in place for a few seconds and press gently off and on to keep them smooth until the glue sets enough to hold permanently. This only takes a few minutes with the quick-dry glue.
With the paper base in place, we added beads, tassels and other embellishments as desired and glued them securely.
The result was a couple of attractive little clocks that would add a bit of an exotic touch to a den or covered patio.
Our next attempt was to use some very nice decorative stones that have been tucked away in our craft trunk.
We started with a base of decorative paper to cover the clock frame, then added the stones in random order until the effect was to our liking and glued them in place.
That was an easy one, and it also gave us a way to show off the little stones that we’ve been hoarding for the past year or so.
Finally, we found some packages of canceled stamps and other stickers a while back and brought them home, knowing we’d find a use for them one day.
The little clocks turned out to be a perfect foundation for displaying the stamps, which added an interesting splash of color to the plain frames.
This project took a bit longer, as we had to layer the stamps in such a way that they covered the frame completely but also showed off the stamps’ designs.
We needed to trim some of the stamps and stickers with an X-Acto knife to make a smooth edge on the inside and outside of the frame.
To finish, we decided to add a layer of sepia-toned decoupage medium on top of the stamps and stickers. This step is optional and not at all necessary.
Oh, and if you really want to create a one-of-a-kind clock, just be sure to put the stamps on upside down like we did on one of ours.
Our topsy-turvy clock was not – a-hem – a mistake, we did it deliberately to make an artistic statement.
Nice recovery, don’t you think?
Contact Jonetta Coffin at jrocoffin@aol.com.
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