I want to apologize for the scarcity and quality of the photos in this tutorial. The camera was acting up.
DIY Steampunk Watch Pendant
A necklace for modern steampunk fans. This necklace will blend into everyday outfits, only revealing its awesome steampunkyness upon closer glance. Who can resist watch parts and brown beads?
You will need:
- An old cheap watch
- Thick fabric (I used two layers of this faux leather stuff left over from a costume)
- Long, tubular beads
- Circular beads
- Strong glue (I used decopauge)
- Needle
- Thread
- 1 jump ring
Total cost: I used supplies on hand. Buying all the materials would cost around $5.
If you have to use a watch wrench to open the watch back, it looks like it will run you around $10. (I need to get one of these).
Step One: Take the watch apart. You will be using the movement, aka the little thing in the middle that makes the watch work.
Keep the rest of the watch for other projects!
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| I used the watch face { HERE } |
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| And the watch case { HERE } |
Also-- before doing anything with the movement, you might want to attack it with some pliers and needles. There are a bunch of small gears buried on the inside. If you gut the movement, those gears are worth keeping for future projects.
NOTE: Unless you have specialty tools, it is very difficult to take the watch apart. I lucked into a watch whose back came off very easily.
Right now, however, I have three watches sitting on my desk whose backs I can't remove. I actually broke my miniature flat-back screwdriver trying to take them apart. You may need to have special watch wrenches to get to the movement.
Step Two: Cut out a circle of the fabric. (I used two layers and glued them back-to-back.)
Glue the movement on. (If the movement has holes in the plastic backing, sew it onto the fabric.)
Thread the needle and begin to sew on the long, tubular beads.
Step Three: Continue to sew the long beads on. I thread three beads on before stitching into the fabric. If you sew tightly, this works wonderfully. Otherwise, stitch after each bead.
Step Four: Sew the circular beads onto the outside. Use a simple loop stitch. The beads will be very messy and will not line up. That is OK.
Step Five: Thread the needle through the holes of the circular beads. This fixes the messy outside beads problem.
Step Six: Sew a jumpring on. Your chain will go through here.
A view of the back. I am a messy sewer.
The finished project. Here you can see that I glued a small metal leaf onto the movement, right where the battery used to be.
Another one!