My son is starting kindergarten this year, and I’ve recently started talking to him about all of the things he’ll be doing at school.  And since I’m pretty obsessed with Instagram, I decided to make a clock out of recent photos to illustrate ‘a day in the life’ once he starts school. This way, he’ll have a visual depiction of what to expect – and helping him learn how to tell time is an added bonus!

I started with the following materials:

• Ruler
• Clock kit (purchased at a craft store)
• A 12 x 12 canvas mounted on wood
• Hole punches
• An Instagram feed filled with the daily activities of my children

I started by making a list of all the activities I wanted to illustrate and then went through my Instagram library (using followgram.me to view my photos on a desktop computer). I saved the selected photos to my desktop computer and then used Photoshop to format the photos into small circles. I chose a 1.75 diameter circle because I have a hole punch in that size, but you could work with any size that suits the base of your clock. I printed my circle photos along with similarly formatted numbers for the hours of the day and cut them out using my hole punch.

Next, I turned my attention to the clock itself. I started by measuring the center of the canvas and cutting a hole through it. I had to use a drill because the canvas had a wood backing.

I assembled the clock pieces on the canvas base following the instructions on the packaging.       I realized that the canvas/wood base was too thin and caused the arms of the clock to extend out too far, so I got creative and inserted a piece of wood (from a wood train track) between the clock and the canvas base. I also decided to cover the clock hands by gluing black cardstock to them and cut a cardstock circle to cover the clock parts.

Once the clock was assembled, I arranged the numbers in a circle (but didn’t glue them at this point).

Once the numbers were arranged, I started arranging the photos in their respective timeslots. Once I arrived at a layout I liked, I started gluing everything to the canvas. I did this by dabbing glue in the center of the circles so that I could rearrange the photos if necessary. I also plan to cover the entire surface in decoupage glue, but I’m going to wait until after the upcoming school open house. I’m hoping to add a couple of pics of his classroom before I completely finish it.

And here’s Jason with his new clock:

Post by Julee Dyer : Warm Hot Chocolate