Kids Wall Clock

How can you tell if you have too much time on your hands?  By seeing how many simple things you turn into complex art projects, of course!  Maybe it's the perfectionist in me, or maybe it's that we only have one child (and thus have *way* more time to devote to her than we should), but a few months back I decided K needed a custom made clock for her big-kid bedroom.  

My free-form kids wall clock.

Backing up a bit - K has been in her nursery since September 2011, and it is about time she had a new space of her very own.  But how does a parent make a fun bedroom that isn't too over-the-top?  I started by perusing Pinterest for ideas, and went to Jo-Ann Fabrics to find a patterned cloth for overall color inspiration.  After using the pattern to select colors (a grey-purple for most of the walls, with blue, green, and yellow for accents), I used the fabric to fashion a valence for the window.

The color inspiration - in valance form.

Grandma came into town for the holidays and volunteered her talents/expertise for painting K's room.  The result was amazing!  I also found a great line of children's artwork from Etsy seller Trafalgarssquare, and purchased a few prints.  Finally, rather than add clothing storage in the form of furniture, we installed a closet organizing system so K could easily reach her hanging clothes. 

A playful mishmash of colors and floating animals.

At this point the bedroom decor had pretty much everything it needed but the right wall clock.  I was originally looking for a cloud clock to go with the hot air balloon theme of the artwork, but was amazed to find that no such thing seemed to exist on Amazon, Ebay, or the world wide web.  After spending so much time and effort to make the rest of the room fit, it felt wrong to settle with just any old wall clock.  Once again enter Pinterest - and the idea to make a free-form wall clock from parts.  My clock's mechanism and arms came from Clockworks, its body is a square of cardboard covered with the patterned cloth I mentioned above, and its numbers were cut out of black paint chips using a scrapbook letter cutter.  This ended up being a bit more expensive than the typical wall clock (~$30 for the clock parts, plus a bit more for the owl cloth), but it turned out really well.  Little K will be able to enjoy this clock for years to come!

The clock from the side.