I don’t love this design, but I kind of like it. It is my only clock ice sculpture design so far too. (well, except for my hourglass design) Just need to make one so that I can post a pic! Or, if you make one, send a pic to me!
updated and expanded 6/24/23 when restored to the new site.
a New Year's clock ice sculpture design
Along with “Happy New Year!” and champagne spray, I found this design and updated it so it would be a little more useful. This piece requires a half block slab (40”x20”x4-5”) and an additional base piece not shown in the template. The reason that it’s “2 minutes to midnight” and not “1 minute to midnight” is that it’s easier to engrave the minute hand when it’s not so close to the hour hand. And there’s also a song by Iron Maiden with the same name; so it flows off the tongue a bit easier. But MAYBE you’re not a fan of heavy metal 🤣
The year number for this clock ice sculpture design is derived from a font called Rosewood. It’s a decorative font that has some extra stuff going on, but I strip away the extra embellishments to get a number style that I like for a lot of the numbered ice sculpture designs on the site. Previously, I would only post one year version at a time, ideally the upcoming one. I’d find though, that I’d either forget to update it with the newer number, or something would happen so that I’d be unable to update it. Because of that, I’ve opted to include versions well into the future. You’re welcome.
I’m not sure if that’s something that I will do with all the year-type designs or if that will be a special feature of upcoming ebooks. But hopefully for this design at least, sometime within the next four years or so, I’ll be able to add additional years. But I guess we’ll see. Might get hit by a meteor or something. Or maybe nobody will care about ice sculptures or they’ll all be sculpted by robots by then. Only time will tell. (With ai and CNCs, this could now happen 😱)
I can think of some other clock ice sculpture designs that I’d like to do for New Year’s. But this design is solid, straightforward, and useful.
You get to choose how you want to do the year numbers. You can make them completely white like I’d recommend for “HAPPY” or you can outline them and then bubble the interiors like in the big “J” in the photo below of a baby shower sculpture.
why is there a baby shower ice sculpture in a post for a clock ice sculpture design? Well, it’s a good example of how to bubble large letters and numbers in a sculpture. However, you’ll want to make sure to snowfill the outline of the year numbers to help it last past midnight!
You might also want to detail the outside of the clock. Bubbling would be cool there too. This design isn’t going to win any awards for its fantastic styling, but while I was adding the new year numbers, I did polish it up a bit. Hopefully, you find the changes to be improvements. Maybe someday when I have lots of free time, I can redo the whole design. I would’ve said that that’ll probably never happen, but I’ve been redoing a fair number of ice sculpture designs on the ice sculpting secrets, so definitely could happen! Especially if I put together a New Year’s designs ebook.
All of the templates are at the bottom. The standard template view on the left and the reverse backfill CNC version on the right.
design variations?
I’d say that there are an infinite number of variations for this one, based on what year it is. And I’ve included 3 variations so far. If I come up with some other clock ice sculpture designs, I’ll add them here or link to a new post.
what about on a CNC?
Pretty much any clock ice sculpture design is going to be a great candidate for CNC engraving. Engraving the clock face by hand is rough. I’ve included reverse engrave designs specifically for the CNC in the templates below.
for more info and some guidelines
If you have any questions about my 2 minutes to midnight clock ice sculpture design for New Year’s, email me or comment below. (It might not let you though if it’s been a while.) If you would like to use this ice sculpture design or any other design on this site, please check the design usage guidelines. The design collection page lists designs on the site.
You might also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets facebook page and you can comment there as well as below. Thanks!
