Clocks and succulents part 1

Hello crafty people! If you are reading this in the US, Happy Almost 4th of July! These crafts have nothing at all to do with America or freedom or anything like that, but they are cute! So I think a few months ago I mentioned in a blog that I was working on some clocks that I was making out of plates and baking dishes. Well, I finally got around to really getting started on those! I bought some clock mechanisms and hands in a set from Hobby Lobby.

I then got two pretty plates and two metal round baking dishes to use as the clock bases. The plates were already so pretty and decorative that they didn't really need anything done to them. I realized that I didn't take a picture of the plates before they already had holes in them for the clock mechanism so here are the plates already drilled into!

The baking dishes, however needed some love. I picked up two sheets of pretty paper and cut them out to fit directly into the center of the baking dish. I then used copious layers of matte Mod Podge to adhere the paper down and seal in place.

I then decided that I wanted some kind of decorative markers on the baking pan clocks to go at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 points on the clock so I took these little round pieces of wood and painted them to match the paper.

After this, I pretty much put the plates, baking pans and little pieces of wood in my drawer and proceeded to forget about them/ignore them for a few months. Fast forward to now and I finally took them out of storage and called up my lovely father to help me drill some holes in them. Drilling into the metal pans was easy and once we figured out how big of a hole we would need we were good to go. The plates were slightly more difficult as you need a special drill bit to cut through the plate without shattering it. We were able to cut through them, but figured out that the holes made by the drill bit he had were too small. So my fabulous dad ordered some more drill bits and we will be trying to make some bigger holes in the plates this week. The plate clocks are now at a bit of a standstill, but I was able to move forward on the baking pans ones. I got the clock mechanisms all set up and then glued the wooden pieces at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 marks which basically finished these ones off. Here is the flower paper one all put together!

My mother thinks a good finishing touch for these would be to add a dot of contrasting paint to the wooden circles to make them stand out more, so I will probably be adding a little more to these this week. Next week I will show you guys the final products of these clocks!

The other project I just got started on is trying to make some little succulent displays. So remember how I made my candles last week? Well that left me with some empty candle jars and I didnt think those should just go to waste. So I used a trick I read on the internet to try and clean out the leftover wax in the jars. I got some water boiling on the stove and then poured it into the jars. This caused leftover wax to detach from the glass and float to the top of the jar. This worked fairly well actually and got most of the leftover wax out of the jars.

I also had some random little plastic succulents leftover from various projects. I got a few more from my mom and the Dollar Tree and was left with enough to make a few projects. I also picked up sand and rocks at the Dollar Tree and was given some mossy greenery from my mother as well. I though that with all of these I could use the candle jars as a base and make some cute sand art/succulent things.

This craft is still mostly in the planning phase so I will have some more for you guys about this next week. Let me know what you guys think about these two projects I am working on in the comments below!

​ - Rebecca