I’ve decided after some gentle prodding from a friend, to post about more than just cake on my blog!!

Many of us “cakers” fell into our profession because of other crafty habits and I’m not different! A visual artist by training, I love anything DIY or creative… and usually it stems from my compulsive hording nature to keep all these sweet little things that I think I might have a use for one day….

And yes, that day always comes…. sometimes the item has survived the waiting period, hidden in the depths of some closet, and sometimes, very very sadly, it has passed onto another life usually via the hands of my husband. It starts with a look, and he says “Christina, you’ve had this forever, you’re not using it. You have too much stuff. Commonnnnn….. give it away”… sometimes if I’m quick enough, I can justify keeping it around, others times he wins and it goes into the give away box…. Those days aren’t as sad as the day that I search for 3 hours for that item, that I forgot we gave away. Those are hard days.

Yes, it’s a tender spot because I had one recently…. I’ll come back here in a second..

 

We’re PREGGO!! Baby #3 is percolating nicely and is set to arrive end of February, a baby girl. We are thrilled, and ubber excited to invite another sweet little person into our family.

And I’m also very excited because this means ROOOM RENO!!!!!!!!! Not only one, nope, (no, there are no twins), but TWO rooms to redo since the big kids are moving into a room together! So their room will need a face lift and the new nursery will need a full overhaul. Ok, so it was actually already pink from the room redo I did for our daughter back in January, but that was not the vision I had for this nusery!! No sirree! We’re headed back to neutrals and soft elegance…

I digress…

The room started with this sketch…  as soon as I heard it was a girl, there it was, in my head…. I had it all together…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But I needed to wait for the kids to get settled into their room (I’ll post on that another time),  before I could begin the nursery. (Which meant emptying the room of all my five year olds most prized posessions… if you have a girl, you know what I’m talking about – buckets, bins, containers, purses and bags FILLED with beads, random hair clips and scraps of paper)

Finally I got my hands on a can of paint and went at it (of course with a fan and opening the windows for ventilation 😉 )

It was starting to come together!!  Now to add the gallery wall….

 

 

And over the crib…. a floral monogram that I made for our sweet baby girl

This one was made with a piece of foam core and about five million silk flowers and foliage that I glue guned onto the foam core. To attach to the wall (since it’s super light) I just glue guned a piece of ribbon to the back and put a nail in the wall. Voila.

But I digress again… Once my inital vision for the room had been established, I needed to focus on the other side where the dresser would be and what would go above it. Her change table is the hallway adjacent so that the room didn’t get too cluttered. I sat in that chair and stared at the wall to invision what would be perfect over top of that dresser…. And I had it. A clock. OK that’s not super genius, I know, but I was going to make a clock from a ceiling medallion. OK again, not super genius, it’s been done before. BUT… I had something I’d been saving for-eve-ah from our local re-store and couldn’t wait to see it come together. It was a “faux” medallion, made from wallpaper material, all rolled up in a neat little box, just waiting for me!! But where the heck did it go????????? My plan was to attach it to foam core (yes, i love the stuff), and cut a hole for the clock face (which I already had) in the middle and hang it up! Light, almost free and the perfect statement for the room! It would add a little more white, but tons of texture, and I remembered it measuring about 18-20″, which would be fabulous.

It was no where to be found. I realized that when we had changed over the rooms, we’d done a huge overhaul of one of the cabinets, and my hubby must have convinced me to get rid of it.  It still breaks my heart. My vision, dashed. My piece de reisistance, GONE.

So back to the drawing board I went. Very very sadly.

And so begins the Clock:

What you’ll need:

• 1 large piece of foam core
• Something large to trace (whatever size you desire, mine is about 19″ )
• Many yards/meters of cording or thick twine. I believe I ended up using close to 30 yards…
• clock face with all the parts (I had one from a wall decal clock that we had removed from another space)
• glue gun
• primer (optional)
• spray paint or paint (optional)
• exacto knife
• pen
• nail/hammer

I started again with foam core.. please note I usually begin my diy’s at night, when I can’t get to the store and most often don’t have everything I’d like at my finger tips. (This is also why I feel craft hoarding is acceptable).

Choosing a large tray that I liked the size of, I traced a circle on my foam core and using an exacto knife, I cut it out. I decided to wait until I had gone around with the cording before I cut out the centre portion, figuring my skills of finding the exact middle would be lacking.

I of course didn’t have twine like I had imagined, but remembered tons of ugly Christmas cording from my hubby’s grandmother’s craft supply that I had come across in my search for the missing wallpaper medallions.

Yup. Its ugly. On their own in the right place, ok they’d be alright, but that red and gold one was just hideous. SO starting on the outside of the foam core circle I starting with my glue gun attaching the cording and went round and round and round. It took forever. I had three spools of the same type of ribbon (albeit different colours) and one large spool of a slightly thinner cording. I save that one for the centre, don’t know why, just did.

     

 

If you look closely in the second picture above, you can see that the thinner cording after the red/gold combo, is also wound in the opposite direction. Since I knew I’d be painting over all of this it seemed like a great textural detail. So I went with it.

Once I’d reached close to the middle I took my clock face/parts and traced where I wanted it to sit.

  

I did a double check to see if by just cutting out that middle portion, if the corded clock would just hang on the clock face once attached to the wall. BINGO. It did, you might need to make sure yours will work in the same way, depending on what clock parts you’re using.

Technically I was finished with the glue gun. But I wanted the edge to have a finished look, so I added this, just around the edge. It covered the foam core “insides” and was enough to finish off the piece.

 

Now I took it out to the garage and spray painted it.

I’d LOVE to tell you it was that simple. But no. Of course not.  The spray paint just kept getting sucked in and that darn RED CORDING kept popping up bright red. If you saw the images above of the nursery, that just wasn’t going to fly. I thought I was done. Then I remembered my huge can of STIX primer that is just wonderful and goes over everything. So I popped that puppy open and lathered on copious amounts of white primer. Finally, coverage.

I have no images of this process…. it was dark and cold in the garage, I was pouting because it wasn’t going quickly or easily and I thought it might end up in the garbage. So I do apologize, but just imagine it being painted.

The next day once it had dried, I realized that white might not be the right colour for this clock, and looked at my shelf of spray paint and found a lovely pale seafoam green. Perfect.

Here she is!!!! It has a lovely seagrass effect and looks rather rustic and lovely in the room. I contemplated attaching or painting numbers on, but since there were numbers and markings on the clock face I decided to leave her be.

One quick nail in the wall and she’s up!

 

Thanks for tagging along on this very long-winded post 😉

I’ll be around again soon!!

Probably to post about the lovely little pearl chandelier hanging in the room…

 

Christina =)