This isn't too detailed, because your mileage may vary but hopefully it inspires people about what you can make out of scrap.

My father-in-law is a wood turner and he often uses the bandsaw to square off a piece of timber before it goes on the lathe. Last year after making a batch of gifts for the old-folks club (he's 83 himself but still calls them "the oldies"!), he had a pile of thin hardwood pieces around 3" square. I kept them thinking they might be useful for something...

A while later I found five 8x5 Adafruit NeoPixel arrays and an ESP 32 leftover from a project at work and a plan was formed.

Supplies

Adafruit NeoPixel Shield: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1430

Step 1: Trim Wood to Size & Arrange

The first thing I did was trim the wood pieces down to the same size as the NeoPixel arrays. I didn't alter their thickness or care that some were wedge shaped (i.e. the thickness changed over the piece).

I arranged them around the NeoPixel arrays till they looked more natural/random, despite it being entirely not natural or random!

Step 2: Mounting

A piece of scrap plywood was cut down to size and the wooden pieces super-glued to it, maintaining the previously decided pattern. Hot glue held the NeoPixels in place.A thin piece of acrylic with a light spray of bronze paint acts as a diffuser for the NeoPixels, held in with a couple of panel pins.

Step 3: Electronics

I won't go into detail about the electronics as it's just one wire between the NeoPixels and the ESP32 ;) I then used Adafruit's NeoPixel library along with a NNTP (internet time server) example I found to make the clock.