I acquired this spool end from my roommate Landon who only needed on side of this spool to make an island out of for his kitchen. It sat in the shed for quite a while until I finally realized what I had wanted to do to it. I read plenty of blogs on how to create your own big clock and I got started!

1. Dry Brushing- This technique takes some practice. Luckily this wood absorbs paint like a sponge so mistakes really do not exist. Dip a little bit of your brush in the paint, and then scrape the paint off on the paint can. Gently and with long strokes paint the wood. Generally rubbing in the paint is a bad idea. Normally when you paint you want to fill your brush often and when you find yourself stressing the brush in order to rub in the paint you need to refill. However, the opposite is true for this technique. Long consistent strokes. Brush it in and only refill your brush when completely necessary.

2. Outline, As you can probably tell, the slate looks desolate and kind of boring! Adding texture from dry-brushing helps add dimension but it’s still not enough (in my opinion) so I added a dark layer around the edge

3. Print out stencil and cut out roman numeral numbers. Now is the hard part! Arrange each Roman numeral equal distance apart. I did noon, 3, 6, and 9 in order to make sure that they would be equal distance apart and one inch from the edge of the wooden spool.

4. Paint! I used was dark gray chalkboard paint. I learned near the end that I could gently blot the paint on top of the stencil and even though it was just paper it didn’t soak through like I thought.

5. Next I put on the actual clock portion which was sold separately on Amazon. I got the bike gear one and I lightly sanded it and painted it with my chalkboard paint to match. I’m not sure if steampunk goes with rustic, but I liked the gears all the same. There are tons of options on Amazon on which gears to get. Just make sure the hands are long enough for your clock. I attached the clock portion into the hole in the center of the spool using sticky tack. This way I could pull it out and in semi-easily.