DIY: A Color Wheel Clock!

My dear moms was visiting this weekend and in between us hitting the local Farmer's Market, eating, shopping at a vintage fair, eating, visiting my long-lost aunt and uncle and, you guester-Chester, more eating, the topic of retirement came up. My mom is a nurse and has been for about a million years. I asked when she was going to stop sticking folks with needles and call it quits and she was all, "but if I didn't go to work, what would I do?" 

Like, whut?!  

Growing up an only child for the first 10 years of my life, I've always been super good at entertaining myself. I mean, I could craft, sew, color, paint and glue for dayz on end cuz my mental makerin' to-do list is so stinkin' long. For zample, this here color wheel clock idea is one I've been kicking around for-stinkin-everz. If I had endless amounts of time on my hands, I foresee that I'd spend weeks, neigh, months in my pajamas surrounded by empty coffee cups, dark chocolate wrappers and mountains of crafting mayhem. It sounds both glorious and horror film-esque all at once. So I suppose it's best I stick with the art teacherin'. 

But I suppose you didn't pop by here to hear all about my questionable dream-life, did you? Let's get to the craft at hand, ermkay? I thrifted this clock well over a year ago simply to take it apart and revamp in this colorful way. Only when I started redoing my art room, did I decide to buckle down and bust this bad boy out. I started by taking the clock apart and sliding the mountain of paint chip swatches I picked up at Home Depot under the hands of the clock. YES, I got permission to pinch all of those paint chips. And YES, I only asked permission after the suspicious sales person was all, "Um, can I help you?!" 

(By the way, if you follow me on Instagram-crackers, you've seen most of these snaps. If you don't follow me on insta, like, whuh? You totally should.)

Once I figured out how I wanted to lay out the colors, I created a template with one of the paint chips. This template was used to help me cut each chip to the correct size and slid it under the frame of the clock as you see here.

Good ole Aleene's Fast Drying Tacky Glue was used to adhere these into place. I opted out of using a hot glue gun. I thought that might make the paper chips stand up too much and prevent the hands of the clock from ticking. 

Bam, done. No time flat, really. And it looked pretty snappy with just the color on the inside, says moi.

But why stop there when you still have all of those pinched paint chips?! So I started to play with the idea of extending the rainbow of fruit flavor beyond the confines of the clock. 

 So I set my clock on some white matte board and proceeded to glue the rest of the chips with hot glue around the edge. I did have to cut a hole out of the center that was the size of the clock so that I could both hang the clock and change the battery when needed. So, without the clock, the background looks like a color wheel donut. Which, you gotta admit, sounds yummers. 

And, yay! The clock now hangs proudly in the art room. It makes me so happy every time I see it. Y'all best give a color wheel clock a go and lemme know how it works for you. And tell the kind folks at Home Depot I said, "haaaaayyy!"