Mod Podge Clock (Ikea hack!)

Posted by Kashmira

Anyone that sews knows - when you're immeresed in a fun project, time just flies and everything else falls by the wayside! Partly for this reason and partly to tell the time (since I'm not one of those my-phone-is-attached-to-my-hand people) I'd wanted to have a clock in my work area. On our last trip to Ikea I spied a simple $2 round clock that was begging to be 'modified'. So here's my little Ikea hack!

This is what I gathered:

1) The Ikea clock

2) Mod Podge

3) Paintbrush

4) My trusted selvage strips

Now - before you go accusing me of slathering Mod Podge on any spare surface I find, I just want to say - weeeell.. you might have something there. There is something very addictive about taking a plain surface and transforming it by just spreading on it some good craft stuff and some magic glue stuff!

So I started by selecting some color coordinated selvage strips and decided to go with a blue/green palette with just a hint of yellow thrown in. I measured the (radial) side of the clock by using the incredibly precise method of placing a selvage strip from edge to edge and snipping it just a little longer than required. And so on with the other strips using the first strip as reference.

I wanted to retain a scrappy feel but wanted to have some order to the chaos. So I picked 4 strips of each print and started by placing them at positions 12, 3, 6 and 9. I glued the fabric by first painting some Mod Podge on the clock surface to prevent the strip from moving and then spread some more generously on top of fabric.

Then I chose the next print of fabric that would look good juxtaposed with the previous print and used 4 strips of that to glue them right next to the ones done earlier ... in a clockwise direction, of course. I continued doing that and here's what it looked like in a while.

When I just had a small gap left between each set of strips, I used the bits of yellow print to bring the whole thing together. Finally I placed the clock on an upturned bowl and left it to dry overnight.

The next morning I just snipped off the extra bits of fabric left hanging over the side of the clock and here's time ticking away on my wall!