Wrap Strap Watch Tutorial

Happy New Year!

I'm not much for resolutions, I tend to not keep them and then just end up beating myself up over them. So while these aren't "official" resolutions, I do plan on trying really hard to accomplish a few things this year. First off to lose the extra pounds that I gained last year when I quit smoking, and also to be better about blogging more often.


In that spirit I thought I'd start the New Year off with my first tutorial. I've certainly followed plenty of tutorials that the other bloggers have posted. I thought it was time I offer one of my own. Bev over at Flamingo Toes wrote a tutorial for this same project. Here's my version.

It's a knock off of this La Mer Wrap watch that I fell in love with! That is to say that I fell in love with the watch, but not the $175 price tag!

 As Bev recommended I found a skinny belt at Target on clearance. I had been checking the thrift stores for one, but couldn't find one that was "just right". I bought the watch at JoAnn's with a 50% off coupon and found the rivets at Michaels. I had to buy a package of 60 rivets, but I'm sure I'll use the extras on something else. Everything else that I used on the project were things I already had, so it cost me about $18 in all. I like that much better than $175!!

I didn't want there to be so many holes in the strap, so I cut the end of the belt off between the 3rd and 4th holes. I rounded the end and burned it with a lighter to "seal".

I then measured and made two cuts, 14 inches from each end. This gave me the two watch strap pieces.

I figured out how far I'd have to fold over the end piece through the bracket on the watch and punched holes in belt ends accordingly.

With the holes punched we put the end piece through the bracket on the watch and set the rivet. I say "we" because Mr. ShowMe had to do that for me because I'm a weakling, so I don't have a picture of the rivet setting action, but the tool and instructions came in the pack of rivets.

At this point I had a watch with a really long strap.

Now for the fun part! I got out the chains I had to work with. Thrift store necklaces and some pieces of crafting chains. I decided on which chains to use and cut each the length of the buckle end of the strap plus one inch.

I gathered the charms that I had. As it turned out, I have a lot of beads, but am a little short on charms.

I like the Eiffel Tower and the heart.. but I didn't think I wanted the lady bug on this piece. So I went through my silver beads and picked out a few that I liked. I put them on headpins and used my round nose pliers to make loops to hang them with.

Once I got the charms all figured out, I attached them to one of the chain pieces. 

See that top chain in the picture? It wasn't quite long enough, so I lengthened it by using an eye pin in two pearl beads and then inserting them into the chain to make it long enough.
I put a fairly large jump ring at the ends of the chains joining them all together and attaching one end to the buckle and the other to the watch. I wasn't able to use that third chain in the picture with the tiny pearls. The links of the chain were just too small to get the jump ring through, so I'll have to save it for another project. 

Here's the end with the chain attachment.

And here's a picture with her wrapped and buckled as I'll be wearing her. 

I'm happy with how she turned out. The strap is a bit bulky and I may trim more off of the end, but I'm going to wear it awhile and see if it relaxes some before I make any further alterations. 


Thanks for visiting my first tutorial! 
Have a fabulous week!