Time Flies When You're Faux-ing Clocks!

I have always been fascinated with clocks. There is something sort of mysterious about trying to measure time, and clocks themselves are just amazing... the tiny pieces all working together, the timeworn faces, the metal and glass and gears. Clocks are beautiful!*

*Unless they are plastic and some kind of funky color like turquoise or mauve and have faux embroidered birds printed on them. Then they're just ugly. But don't these clocks deserve to be beautiful, too? I think YES!

Step 1: Find Ugly Clocks & Tear Apart
So, I found two aesthetically-challenged clocks at the thrift store and vowed to make them look GOOD. I began by disassembling these lovely ladies. I thought it would involve a screwdriver. It did. But not in the way I imagined. You see there were no screws holding this clock together... just plastic tabs. So, I used my flathead screwdriver to pop the plastic tabs out of their sockets and thus was able to remove the clock faces. Next, I pulled off the clock hands, careful not to break them as they were made of the finest plastic!

Step 2: Spray Paint
After that, I spray-painted the outside black. In hindsight, I probably could have left well enough alone. After all, black is classy! But I thought, "Ooooh, wouldn't an old rusty clock be SO cool?" So, I decided to faux-rust these babies. It was a long process, and didn't turn out as completely awesome as I'd hoped, but I still like it okay, and from a distance it kinda, sorta looks rusty, right?
 
Step 3: Rustify!
To rust-up my clocks, I sponged on a layer of brown acrylic, then another layer, only this time I used the sponge brush to pull at the paint and create a kind of rust-like texture. When they were dry, I used a combination of colors and brushes (see photo) to create more rust "texture" with orange-browns, coppers, and a hint of blue and white. If you tackle a similar project and love the idea of rust, I say go for it! You can always spray paint it black again if it doesn't look right.

 
Step 4: Facetime
Next, I needed some new faces for my clocks. Nothing says vintage like Roman numerals! I found a coolio clock face online and used Photoshop to make it the size I wanted (measuring the plastic clock face covers as my template). You could potentially do this in other programs, probably even Word. We don't have a color printer, and I didn't really want to go with black and white for my faces, so I decided to use some old scrapbook paper as a background for my clock faces. I think they look adorable!

Step 5: In Which I Glue Fake Paper Hands Onto My Clock
Now it was assembly time! I glued the clock faces over the old ones, then put the little hands back on. Of course, one set of hands were way too modern and ugly, so I glued some faux ends to my clock hands (yes, they're made of paper, what of it?).

I reassembled my clocks and am pretty happy with the results! They are much improved and for three bucks (total for both!) I'm feeling like this makeover was totally worth the... time. :)