I love Styrofoam

I have a terrible confession to make. Yes, I’m coming out of the closet. I love Styrofoam.

There, I said it, it’s out there for everyone to see and know.

Styrofoam is so easy to work with it’s hard to resist. It can be cut, carved and molded into just about any design. It ‘s easy to work with, can be painted in a variety of different ways and, in the end, it’s extremely lightweight.

That lightweight part is particularly useful when you’re making things to hang on the wall, like clocks.

My latest project was a simple clock, made of Styrofoam and carved in the shape of the sun. I used two-inch thick foam, carving a hole in the back for the clock’s mechanism. The wires around the outside are simply stuck into the foam. The kites, quarter moons, balloons and stars at the end of each wire are cut out of one-inch thick foam.

I used three different paint colors for the sun. The eyes, nose, mouth are cut into the foam.

One tip when painting foam is to use a scrap piece to see how the paint will affect the foam before putting it on your project. I’ve never had a problem when using a brush but I have had different results with spray paint. The spray will occasionally eat into the foam.

In this case, the foam was originally smooth but after spraying it has a much more rough look and feel. I like the texture it adds to the piece but it depends on what look you are going for and may not always be appropriate.

If you want to spray the piece, but don’t want to risk it eating away at it, then I would suggest brush painting a base coat on first and then spraying.