Watch Tutorial



The first thing you will need is a mat of some kind to lay out your materials.  A simple washcloth will work, it will just keep the beads from rolling away and give you a good place to work.  On this watch, I laid out some of my beads, but don't do it all the time, just depends on how I feel :-)

 

This watch face came with a loop - not a problem, it just needs to come off.  A simple pair of pliers will do the trick, or sometimes I can even use my thumb and finger to twist it off.  If you look at the ring, you'll see a little split where it joins, you want that split to be just to the left of your pliers or fingers.

Grab hold and twist the hand holding the ring forwards toward you. If you notice in the first picture my thumb is on top, kind of parallel with the face, then after I twisted it's on the bottom, more perpendicular. The ring will twist open and you just pull it out.

You're now ready to go -- cut a piece of stretch magic -- I usually make mine about 16 inches, gives me enough room to do whatever design and enough to tie.  I know how much I need to work with to tie it off, but I would leave a little extra for the girls - so 16 inches is probably good, even though their wrists are smaller.  Thread one end through the loop on the watch -- the nice thing about the stretch magic is that it's stiff enough to use by itself -- don't need to tape the end or anything.

 

Pull the ends even (the silver rings are only to show where the ends are)

Start stringing beads

 



 

 And more beads

 

You can try it on occasionally by holding the ends together and just wrapping around your wrist -- or you can measure the wrist first and measure the strand while you're working on it.

 

This one is finished - you can see between my two fingers how much cording I have left.

 

 

Now comes the fun part!  I like to leave the main part of the beads laying flat and bring my watch face over to where the ends are.

 

 

  Thread one side through the loop on the top of the watch face.

 

Pull the cording until the beads are tight against the face loop.

 

 

Now bring the other side up and tie an overhand knot.

 

 

 

Take the ends and finish tying the surgeon's knot

 

Pull the ends tight and take the end closest to the watch loop and slip it back through -- so that you have one piece of cording on either side of the watch loop.

 



 

Pull it through and then stretching it a little so that you can get to the knot add a dab of glue.

 

 

 

Once you have the glue, pull on each end of the cording, so that you are pulling the knot tight, but also slipping the knot inside the loop on the watch face -- that way you won't be able to see it.

 

Let the glue dry for about 5 minutes and then take a pair of sharp tiny scissors and cut as close as you can to the metal loop of the watch.

 

Easy as that -- you have a finished watch!!  Trust me, it will take longer to read this post than it would to string the beads, well at least for some of the girls who just "go for broke."  Seriously though, it's really not that hard.  Have fun!!