Junk to Treasure: 70′s Clock Turned Cool New Wall Art

Monday, July 9, 2012 in Decorating, Home

Gosh, it was a loooong time ago that I posted about this thrift store find, a big, old gold plastic flower clock, I assume from the 70′s or thereabouts.

About a year after I posted about it, I finally got around to removing the clock part and spray painting the whole thing. Originally, I wanted to paint it a bold, bright color like red or lime green. But after some thought, I decided to go with plain old white. The better to pop against a colored wall, you see.

Well, the spray painting didn’t go that well. Some of the surface of the clock sort of curdled. I don’t know if it’s just because I didn’t clean this thing well enough (lots of nooks and crannies, ugh) or if I should have primed it or what. Or maybe it was just too humid outside. I don’t know. Anyway, I got discouraged and back in the garage it went for about another year or so. Man, the unfinished, part-way done projects I have around here. Surely everyone has projects like this that take forever to get done, right? I’m not a hoarder, am I? Don’t answer that.

So anyway. We finally got around to getting the guest bedroom in ship-shape, and when we needed something with impact above the bed, I immediately thought of my poor tucked-away, curdled paint flower-shaped thing. After pulling it back out, I realized the curdling wasn’t really all that bad. You don’t even really see it unless you’re up close.

As for the middle part, where I’d removed the clock, I’d been thinking I’d place a round of mirrored glass in the center. But the exact perfect size isn’t exactly a breeze to come by.

And so I had this little brain-click: why not just use a piece of scrapbook paper? So I dug through my scrapbook paper stash (again with the hoarding) and came up with this neat green number.