Beading Watch Bands

My fun watch handcrafted by a Carolina crafter was given to me by my daughter. I not only hurt my pride when I fell on it, but also shattered one of the ceramic beads on its band. Result of this mishap: unhappiness in breaking the watch and one ugly bruise. I replaced the broken bead and continued on.

And then the battery eventually died. I tried to buy a replacement battery, but realized the battery cost more than a brand new working watch face. (New watch faces are available at the craft store for about $9.)

So I decided I had done everything I could to repair that gifted watch, and tossed it. Sigh. On to the next craft adventure: making a beaded band for a watch face.

Here were the tools required to fashion a new watchband:

1: the new watch face with included battery
2: strong black fishing line ... there are lots of available cords, but my husband's tool box was handy for raiding
3: dichroic glass beads, cloisonne beads, spacer beads, jump rings
4: a pair of wire cutters and a couple of pair of beading crimpers

Here is a picture of most of the stash used:

If you visit this website, you will find information from start to finish on how to make a watchband with three strings of beads on each side of the watch face. Be sure to purchase your watch face before trying this particular tutorial, because many watch faces do not have three places to tie in your beads.

The watch I had purchased was made with one loop on each side of the face, so I used two medium weight strands of black fishing line through each side of the face, strung the glass beads onto the line, and secured the ends of the clasp to each end of the four-inch strand of beads.

The picture on the right shows half of the completed watch band. Remember a little glue to secure knotted ends never hurts.

And here is the completed watch (and matching earrings -- a tutorial on how to make them was given here here in a previous post).

Two more websites that I found useful for making beaded watchbands are here and here. The picture does not show the shimmering dichroic beads very well, but the process of making them gives beautiful results. You might be interested in reading about dichroic glass here.