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.
She may not be perfect, but she's perfectly imperfect :)
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