Birthday Gift Ideas for Men – Faux Turquoise Polymer Clay Clock

Do-It-Yourself Handcrafted Gift Idea To Showcase Your Polymer Clay Talents:

What sort of birthday present do you give an older fellow that has downsized his lifestyle for retirement? How about a faux turquoise clock… made using polymer clay of course!

My FIL and my Dad's birthday's are two days apart and just happened this past weekend. This year we celebrated with both of them together. The problem with these two fellas is having to come up with unique and thoughtful gifts that don't take up too much space, and that we haven't already given them before.

I had a drawer full of clock parts left over from when I taught classes on making mosaic clocks. So I decided to make some desk top units about the size of a CD disc. In fact I actually used an old CD to trace the circles and the center hole, which worked out perfectly.

Now for a theme. Doug's Dad has always been a bit of a rock hound so I thought a faux turquoise clock might be nice for him (pictured above).

And for my Dad, well he got a fish clock to go along with his lifelong passion for the outdoors. But you'll have to wait to see how that one turned out. I'll post the picture in a future article.

The turquoise clock was made using a background slab of a copper colored clay. Bubbles tend to surface on large flat pieces like this, so it was baked upside down in a ceramic tile sandwich for an hour. More information about this unique baking technique is available here: Baking Polymer Clay Pendants

After the initial background slab was finished baking, I laid out several thick slices from a faux turquoise cane onto a sheet of glass. These slices, placed next to each other on the glass, were then rolled out into a flat sheet.

The next step was to add the unbaked faux turquoise sheet to the already baked, copper colored, clay base.

Just to make sure the layers would meld well together, the baked background slab was scratched with a pointy tool and spread with a thin layer of TLS (Translucent Liquid Sculpey). Then the rolled out sheet of faux turquoise was laid on top, smoothed over and trimmed.

The whole thing was placed back into the oven, turquoise side down in a ceramic tile sandwich for another hour. Once hard the disk was sanded through all the grits and buffed.

For the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock hour markings, I used some copper clay left over from the background slab, and covered it with gold leaf… crackled by rolling through the pasta machine. Small strips were cut and baked separately. They were coated with future floor finish to protect the gold leaf and then glued to the face of the clock with Krazy Glue.

Finally, the clock parts were added. And I also made a small stand using copper wire from Home Depot. With the stand, the clock sits nicely on a desk top. alternatively, the clock can also be taken off the stand for hanging on the wall.

Well both my FIL and my Dad loved their clocks. The party turned out nice and we sent the men off into another year of dancing and wild times… or… maybe I should say another year of reading, short vacations and projects around the house!