Tick Tock

Hallo all!  It's time for a new Get Altered challenge at eclectic Paperie, and our host this time is Erin.  She decided on a Clocks theme, so Altered Clocks it is - on your marks, get set, go!  All the challenge details (as well as more inspiration from Erin and the rest of the team, of course) are here, the prize is a voucher for the eclectic Paperie store, and you have two weeks... tick, tock, the clock is ticking.

I'm very grateful to Erin for picking this theme... her timing couldn't have been better (boom, boom!).  We'd already identified the need for a clock in the dollshouse museum (so that we know how many hours we've been slaving away in there, and when it's time to go home to start slaving at the craft desk!), and were about to start the search for a nice one.

Well, thanks to Erin, all we needed was a cheap clock and my crafty stash - and now we have a bespoke clock, in exactly the right colours.

If you've seen any of the museum posts (either here or at Cestina's Dollshouses), you'll know that all the random furniture shipped over from the UK has been "altered", so that it's all now a very fetching green, and looks as though it all belongs together.

So green was where I headed with my clock, taking my inspiration from one of my favourite makes, the Seed of Happiness hanging.




I guess I should show you a "before" version, so that you can see it was definitely different to start with...

We picked it up for the equivalent of about £2.50 at Kik - cheapy shop here in CZ and while one half quite appealed to me (guess which!), the other half really didn't - so it was time to get altering!!












I started with a painty background, created with Fresco paints and crackle glaze.






I layered in lots of stamping, mainly in Olive Archival, as I need it to stick around a good long while!

Then I used a couple of stencils with various applications...













.... paints, inks, texture paste...













... and even some some Treasure Gold for a touch of gilding, to build up a layered look.









Love how it's turned out, with textures colliding, shifting colours like dappled woodland, and the creeping vine crawling its way out from the centre.

The numbers are mostly cut using the Tim Holtz WordPlay die - all bar one one.

(And, yes, I did mean that... spot the odd one out if you can!  Do you know there are five, yes FIVE, number ones on a clock face?)







I cut them out of Grungeboard, which turned out to be just as well, since I changed my mind a number of times about how they should look... and the Grungeboard will put up with almost any amount of product and procedure without collapsing.


In the end, a simple coat of Picket Fence crackle paint seemed to work best against the background.





I also did some gilding around the edges, bringing a little more definition and distressing to the whole thing.

So that's my altered clock - nothing hugely inventive about it, just an alteration of a not-very-lovely object to one that will be in daily use and offer - I believe - beauty as well as usefulness; William Morris would be proud of me (see the quote below)!

There have been so many amazing entries in the last few challenges... I hope that you'll find time to play along with our Altered Clocks theme - can't wait to see what you come up with.

Have nothing in your house (or museum) that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris

Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.
Pablo Picasso

A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
Anonymous


I would like to enter this in the following:
At the Inspiration Journal they are playing with Marvellous Masks and Spectacular Stencils this month
At Simon Says Stamp and Show they are having A Very Strict Challenge

Some of what I used came from my stash, but you could create something very similar using these products: