This post was written by Bethany Boehmer as part of the Monthly Mini-Grant award. The Monthly Mini-Grant awards individual students up to $50 worth of materials to make something awesome and is centered on multi-disciplinary projects across a range of shops and spaces. Bethany was awarded materials and constructed this project in March of 2025. 

“I learned how to better work with resin…”

Concept

This clock is actually a birthday + graduation gift for someone, and I got the idea from the fact that a nice watch is (or at least used to be) a traditional graduation gift. A watch is a little out of my current caliber, but I reviewed some resin clock projects online and decided that would be doable for me.

Inspiration | Process

I started out by making an initial design for how I wanted the clock to be pieced together; this is where I decided to have a wooden block in the middle to partway house the clock mechanism surrounded by a resin pour. I then sketched out a couple of designs for the style of the clock before settling on an ocean/wave theme.

“My favorite part was definitely pouring the resin. It’s a little funky to work with because it’s not exactly like paint, so it requires other techniques to get the design you want.”

I actually built the clock by first starting with the wooden pieces, which were done on the lager cutters in the woodshop. I engraved a simple wave pattern on the center wooden pieces and cut it out in a circle, then cut out the numbers 3, 6, 9, and 12 to go onto the clock face. I then utilized the composite shop to work with the resin, which I did in two pours. I placed the wooden piece and some white decorative rocks in the mold and poured a dark blue, medium blue, light blue, and white, mixing the colors where they met to give off waves meeting a shore. The second pour added the numbers on the clock face and included a similar mix of colors, but also incorporated a lot of clear resin on top to keep the numbers visible. I then had to wait about 3 days for the resin to fully cure, after which I took the clock back to the woodshop, drilled a hole to place on the clockwork and drilled a couple larger holes that only went halfway through the wood to house the clockwork. The clockwork itself was pretty easy to assemble, and the last thing I had to do was sand down some of the edges of the resin.

Finished Product

It’s a wall clock! And I tested it with batteries; it does work.

Things Learned

I learned how to better work with resin, as one of my biggest problems throughout my pours were air bubbles, which I could’ve prevented by going slower. I also think I should’ve done it in more layers; some of my numbers kind of drifted around while the resin was curing, as I did not realize at the time that wood floats in resin.

“Resin dye is really strong! You only need a little bit, and always make sure you’re handling both the dye and resin in gloves and clothes that you’re not particularly attached to.”

What’s next? 

I want to try some more resin-pouring work. I’ve specifically seen some instances of people putting together artwork by pouring thin layers of resin and then painting each layer once it hardens, giving depth to the painting, which is something I’d like to try! Maybe I’ll make a coaster out of this style.