Tick tock, there is a clock in my shop...
- ayjaywebb
- May 6
- 3 min read
I am writing this as I peer out of the window on a cloudy Spring day. Sadly this does not show the garden at its best, nor you could argue is the sight of my aged lurcher Elsie Spindles widdling in the corner of my carefully planted flower bed. Not content with this, she slowly winched herself up from the squat and squirt position, shot me a triumphant look and then trampled through the rest of the as yet ‘un widdled’ on plants. Flattened to her exacting standards. She then disappeared behind the greenhouse but I decided not to see what she was doing, I could make an educated guess.
You may think this might be irksome to me, but to be honest it is just a delight to see her enjoying the breeze ruffling her whiskers. Being a human slave to an elderly hound can be quite time consuming but at least I am content in knowing that I never have to go to the bathroom alone, or indeed walk anywhere in the house unaccompanied again. This has meant that I have also had to install her bed in my work area so she can watch me drink coffee and procrastinate over my latest creative endeavours.
What is my latest creative endeavour I hear you ask? Well I would be delighted to answer that. I have just finished my first mixed media clock. I have a glorious husband, Hector, who is currently enjoying an obsession with fixing and fettling cuckoo clocks. Gone are the evenings when we sit quietly and serenly contemplating the day. Now we bear aural witness to the sporadic and at times mistimed asthmatic peeping of 3 clocks, cuckoos primed to chirrup and wheeze when you least expect them. It is less than relaxing but worth it to see the beatific fizzog of aforementioned husband, knowing that he has coaxed them back to working life.
Back to my new make though. As part of his clock collecting frenzy, Hector has been buying up old, unfixable clocks to harvest the various parts to re use. One of the items was a rather lovely old silvered clock face which after some stylish eyelash fluttering (on my part) found its way into my work area.
What to do with it though. Reaching for my sketchbook I begin to jot down some ideas. I have been experimenting lately with image transfers and had come across a collection of vintage images depicting circus performers, one of which was a most jaunty lady with legs akimbo at lets say gin o’clock. I could see a perfect marriage of materials, it would be a splendid addition to the sad and neglected clock face.
Now I had given the clock face new life, something of a marginally saucy new life I would like to add, that I was of course duty bound to continue working on it. The next step was finding an old frame to house it in, which I carefully added a wooden decorative edge, and painted in my favourite iridescent bronze acrylic paint.
Next was the decoration of the frame frontage surrounding the clock face. For this I chose a beautiful gold and green lokta paper, handmade and screen printed in the old fashioned way in the Kathmandu valley. I love this process of choosing and matching materials and elements of a make, infact it is my favourite part of the process. The edging around the clock face has been decorated with recycled vintage brooches and paper flowers. It has a quartz clock movement on the back, where the battery can be easily changed and the clock movement has a hanger on it so it can either be hung on a wall or placed on a surface.
I am so pleased with this as it has pulled together different materials that were in danger of withering away, neglected and forgotten. Now they can make their debut together, there may even be a fanfare as they are listed in my Etsy shop.
The problem is of course that I now don’t want to sell it.
Sighing as I realised I had no room to keep another creation that I couldn’t part with, I begrudgingly listed it in my etsy shop, humming a sad little lament as I did so. There is no time to mourn though, Elsie has just indicated she needs to go back outside for another comfort stop.
Do have a look on my Etsy shop as there are a multitude of books and mixed media creations for your viewing pleasure.
