I’ve been wanting to make a Buzz Lightyear clock for years. I bought the wood and clock movement 3+ years ago and just never got to it. Finally the stars aligned and I pulled out the materials and got to work. My original plan for years was to mimic the swinging leg type of clock like the Elvis clock I had back in the day.

Unfortunately (and fortunately) I found a swinging leg Buzz Lightyear clock on Ebay and didn’t want to do my clock the same way…

So I had to get creative. My first idea was to do a traffic cone with his legs swinging underneeth. You’ll recall that in Toy Story 2 they had to cross the street to Al’s Toy Barn hidden inside traffic cones. This was a good idea… but I didn’t like that it would be mostly cone and almost no Buzz. I figured if I had to settle for a little Buzz there had to be a better way. So I started thinking about situations in the movies where Buzz Lightyear would be swinging… then it hit me. The CLAW!

So I sketched this up:

I originally figured the rocket to be nearly 16″ tall! I eventually scaled it down and widened it a bit to get it down to 12 inches.

I sketched it out on the wood. This was before I changed the rocket to be wider. I had to make the change when I realized that his feet would swing out of the sides! That’s no good.

The clock got deeper when I realized I’d need a back board. Here I clamped it all together and added the clock movement to make sure it would all work before gluing and paint.

To transfer my art from the paper to the wood I used my inkjet printer and printed on wax paper, wet the wood a bit and pressed them together. I don’t think I needed the water. As you can see the ink ran quite a bit. Not that it mattered. If you use this technique remember to reverse the image before you print. It’ll change back once you apply it to the wood.

Here Buzz is with a bit of paint applied. Unlike my Buzz Lightyear Nutcracker, I decided to paint black outlines as if it were a comic character.

Here is the finished character. It’s about 5″ tall in total.

The backboard was painted light blue. I glued wooden blocks on to create the spacing that the clock movement needed.

The claw rocket is a darker red. I found a color at Hobby Lobby that nailed it.

The finished clock face. I added a second light blue color to further simulate the glass. Light and dark reds helped add a metallic sheen to the rocket. The console and is a duplicate of the one in the movie.

I had forgotten about the Little Green Men! I sketched them out on a scrap of wood, cut them out and painted them.

And here it is! Ready for some clear coat.

Thanks for reading!