Inspiration Field Trip

Yesterday, I started sanding down this beast of a picture frame in hopes of turning it into a clock. By the way, I took and developed that picture of our family dog, Max, in my high school photography class. I'd like to save it for a different frame because the picture's sentimental to me.




I call this frame a "beast" because not only is it pretty large {16" wide and 19.5" long}, but the detailing makes it so tedious to sand!




That's a lot of gold to sand off! Blegh...

I have been wanting to make a clock for awhile now but just wasn't sure how I wanted it to look. This tutorial from The Hand Me Down House has given me some direction but it's not exactly what I want since it's small and has no numbers. The double frame is a super cool idea!




The gray is just lovely! It's strange but gray is one of my absolute favorite colors.

Clocks without numbers look incomplete to me, like whoever made it just gave up and didn't want to bother trying to make it functional {no offense, Amanda! Your clock is gorgeous!}. Also, I just lack the talent to try and tell time without numbers.

So I was seriously lacking in vision for my clock. I Googled images of clocks and nothing really suited my fancy. I noticed that there is a huge lack of homemade clocks.

After I had been sanding The Beast for almost an hour {I am so not done...}, my husband suggested that we take a drive up to the mountains to get away from the hear. One of the greatest things about living in Cali is that you can drive an hour and a half where it's 20 degrees cooler than the valley's sweltering heat and you're surrounded by incredible beauty! I thought this would be perfect to help me get inspired for my clock. What could be more inspirational for a project than seeing the handiwork of the original Creator?

We packed up the little man and our dog and headed for Huntington Lake. We actually ended up going a bit higher to 9,000+ feet. Here's some pics...




















One thing I kept eyeballing was the differing textures of bark on the various types of trees.













So gorgeous! I knew that I wanted my Beast frame to be painted aqua to go with my craft room, I just wasn't sure what I wanted the clock face to look like. From our little road I got me some inspiration and thought it would be cool to try and make a clock face with a bark texture.

I better get back to sanding! More to come...