DIY Time Zone Clocks

Here is the latest addition to my master bedroom! I decided to decorate this room with maps and eclectic items to give it a travel theme since I love to travel. One night I was laying in bed looking up at the drop ceiling leading to my master bathroom, and cue lightbulb moment as I thought, "That would be the perfect place for a clock!" Then for some strange reason my brain took that a step further and  I thought, "Or maybe 3 clocks??" And that's what sparked the idea of time zone clocks, which fits perfectly into my travel theme!

The first thing I did was buy my clocks! I got an amazing deal on these clocks from target: 

$3.99 each in stores! 

When I first decided to do this project I immediately thought global. My original plan was to set my 3 time zones to: 1. Plantation, FL (duh!) 2. Sydney, Australia and 3. Johannesburg, South Africa. And originally thats what I did. Then I had to tackle the problem of how to label/indicate the time zones on the clocks. So at first I made some decal lettering to simply spell out the names of the cities:

I apologize for the quality of this photo :( It was taken with my old phone, good riddance! 

But, after putting it up I wasn't as crazy about it as I thought I would be :(

So, I took it all down except for the center clock, and it stayed like that for about a month. 

Then cue second lightbulb!! One day when my gaze meet the singular remaining clock  I thought, "I wonder if I could take that apart". Being a 4$ plastic clock from target I figured I probably could. So I took it down, and after some struggle I got the plastic dome off the front. Ten more minutes of struggle and I had the domes and hands off of all three clocks!

This is when I decided to get more personal with these clocks. As I have mentioned before I am from Wisconsin (best state!) and I am not sure if I have mentioned, but my boyfriend is from Puerto Rico. Granted there is not much of a time difference between Wisco, FL, and PR (only 1 hr place-to-place!) BUT it is a difference, so I ran with it! 

So, (finally, I know!) Here's what I did:

1. I printed simple outlines of my three places to use as stencils: 

2. I cut out my stencils, traced them on bright blue card stock (6 pack on sale for $0.14 at target!!!) and cut out my states (you could skip this step entirely and print straight onto your card stock if you have faith in your printer to run the card stock through without jamming, clearly I have no such faith in mine!):

3. Next I Mod Podged the states onto my clocks. Florida was the easiest because it just so happens the state of FL is the perfect shape to fit on a clock face, who knew?! For the other two states I ended up having to take the battery pack off of the back so the middle part of the clock that holds the hands wasn't in the way:

Then I was able to glue my paper flat and cut out the center hole with my Xacto knife. 

4. Last, I reassembled my clocks, and set the times!!

I love the pop of color the clocks add to this area of the room :)

Close-up of the best one :)

Florida and Puerto Rico don't look too shabby either!

I love how these turned out! And the best part is the whole project cost only $12.14!! 

Make It Your Own:

This idea could be customized to any state, country or city. In the case of a city, a cut-out could be made of the country or continent where it is located and then a star or another marker placed where the city is. 

Or, instead of a silhouette, a city or city code could be spelled out on the clock-face. 

The possibilities are endless!!  

Thanks for stopping by, 

-Liz :)