Ideas for DIY wrist watches

I don't know about you, but whenever I make something, I get a flood of ideas for new versions of the same idea. Are you like that as well? (No, just me?) So, I thought it would be fun to share the predecessors to the DIY watch I shared yesterday. Yep, it was not my first watch-rodeo. So, here are a few of my earlier makes in the watch department.

I made this one for Rein about a year ago. He wanted a sort of rustic watch with a wide band and a big buckle. I used an old watch of his for the head, and some studs to attach it to the wrist band. He was very happy with the result. After I had all the bits together, it was a rather simple make.

This is the watch that started the embroidered watch mania for me. For a while I was seriously contemplating doing a whole series of these for sale. But, given your massive (lol) interest in the watch auction, I guess it was the right decision not to. Seriously, though, no-one interested in an embroidered leather wrist watch? Anyone?

Last, but not least, the leather wrap watch I made for Mari Krõõt. Not a very successful make, I must admit, as the watch-head turned out to be broken, and had to be replaced. And then that one turned out to be flawed as well. I guess it simply wasn't meant to be, hah? Luckily, Mari Krõõt is a DIY queen herself now, and made herself a new one.

And, if all of this got you wanting more, you can check out my first watch DIY I did as a guest post, and take a look at yesterday's post as well.

Just in case you missed all the crumbs I've been spreading, there's still time to get that auction going and get yourself this leather watch right here!

Thanks for stopping by!

xo. Hanna

DIY Embroidered Leather Wrist Watch

 First of all I just want to say a thanks for the kind comments on yesterday's post. I was a bit nervous to publish it, because, well, doing your money laundry in public is kind of scary, but I really feel it's a topic that should be discussed more. I truly appreciate your support!

Today is a new day and I have an epic DIY to share. It's one of those projects where I made something as gift, and it came out so awesome I knew I needed to turn it into a tutorial. But then it took me like a year to get it done. It's ok, though, because there's never too late share a DIY. 

I made the first version of this watch for my friend Petra. I was in love with that watch! I'm going to share pictures of it tomorrow, so you can all admire it in all it's glory (so, please don't break my heart if you don't think it's as awesome as I do). 

Making handmade wrist watches is actually not as hard as I thought at first, and it's even easier, if you make it out of an old watch that comes with all the metal parts, which are the hardest to source. Which is why I chose to make this one from a pre-made wrist watch. This way you have all the necessary parts, and a quick template for the wrist-band as well. 

This tutorial has about a million steps, but don't feel discouraged. It's actually not that hard. I could show you in 5 minutes in person, but since I can't do that, I have to rely on pictures to make it easy for you. So, I've laid out all the steps to make the process as clear as possible.

 You will need:

• Thick (about 2mm) (faux) leather scraps (some fabric stores sell industry left-over leather scraps, which is where I got mine)
• Wrist watch (c/o Pandahall)
• Embroidery thread
• Embroidery needle
• Crop-a-dile/ hole punch/ awl
• Rotary cutter/ carpentry knife (optional)
• Scissors
• Paper
• Ruler and pencil
• Colored pencils
• E6000 glue

1. Lay the watch down on paper and trace it with a pencil. 

2. Draw a rectangle around the watch according to the markings on the picture above. make sure that the watch template line is in the center of the rectangle both vertically and horizontally. Also, mark a line 1cm from the sides of the rectangle. That's where the cutting line for the wrist band will be.

3. Cut out the rectangle, and round the corners with a coin.

4. Dot the template with dots that are 1cm apart on the long side, and 0.5cm apart on the short side. Add additional dots to the center (one dot on each side of the watch head), and four dots at the end on each side (2 on each side of the wrist band).

5. Punch holes through all the dots with the smallest end of the hole punch/crop-a-dile, or an awl.

6. & 7. Use coloring pencils to draw your design to the template. This will make embroidery so much easier later on, and let's you get a clearer vision of what it's going to look like.

8. Use the template to cut out a corresponding piece of leather. Set that aside for now.

If you like the wrist band of your watch as it is, not need to make a new one, just skip this part.

9. Take the old watch and cut off the wrist band as close to the head as possible. Also, cut off the buckle.

10. Use the long side of the old wrist band to cut out a new one. Make sure to add extra length for the fold.

11. Mark the holes onto the new wrist band through the old one, and use the hole punch to punch new holes.

12. Cut the end you're going to attach to the watch head slightly narrower, and feed it through the slit of the watch head.

13. Add a tab of glue to the end and glue the fold shut.

14. Cut the other side of the wrist band, making sure to add length to both ends for folding.

15. Make a hole in the center of the band about 2cm from one end of the new band. Cut the tip a bitt narrower. 

16. Feed it through the buckle, and put the needle through the hole. Glue the end to the backside of the band. Attach this side of the wrist band to the watch head the same way you did with the other side.

Now you have yourself a new watch base. Looks much better already, right?

17. Take the piece of leather you cut earlier and place the template on top of it.

18. Cut lines the width of the wrist band right beside the watch head, and at the 1cm line you drew on the sides. (those are the straight pencil lines that go across the wrist band in the first picture). 

Punch through all the template holes. Once you've got the markings in, you can take off the template, and finish the job. It took me quite a while of stabbing to get through all the holes.

19. Start embroidering! Finally, right? I suggest going by color. So take one color thread, and do all the embroidery in that color. then switch. 

to secure the start of the thread, make a not to the backside after the first stitch. End with another not around the last stitch.

20. -23. Add layer after layer of thread. if you like the result at any point, you can also stop. No shame in changing your design half way through. Or, you could go with just one color. That would look awesome, too.

24. Finally, feed the wrist band of the watch through the slits. Tadaa! Almost done.... 

To keep the long end of the wrist band tangling, cut a narrow strip of leather, wrap it around the buckle side of the wrist band, cut to size (leaving room to feed the other end of the wrist band through), and close up with a bit of thread. Now your done.

Whew! That was a lot of steps, right. Honestly, it took me about three times as long to write this tutorial, as it took me to make the watch. I don't think I've ever had a tutorial with sooooo many pictures. But, I hope it was worth it.

 

Do you like it? I love it!

As my next B-school payment is coming up, I'm putting this beauty up for adoption. So, If you'd like to get yourself this watch, you can participate in the auction I'm having right here. Click and make your bid.The bidding starts at 25$ (not including shipping). The auction ends on Thursday, 5th of March, at 9pm Central European Time.

That's a wrap for today!

xo. Hanna

The watch used for this tutorila was provided to me by PandaHall. All ideas and awesomeness are my own.

February Income Report & Big News

Today marks the beginning of a whole new chapter for me. Remember how I posted about my scholarship video to B-School, Marie Forleo's epic online business school for modern entrepreneurs? Well, I didn't get the scholarship, but my gut told me to sign up, so I had a heart to heart with my husband, and my parents, and decided to make the biggest investment in myself I've ever made. It's a wonderfully scary feeling, but I promised myself I was going to be courageous this year, and that fear wasn't going to stop me. 

So, it's my first day in B-school today. Alumni of the program have said that there's life before, and life after B-school. I'm not quite sure where this journey will take me, but I'm very sure of one thing. I want a life and business I love! I want to enjoy waking up in the morning. I want to be passionate about the work I do. I want the family I've always dreamed of. And the only way I'm going to get there is if I start taking myself seriously, and take action. 

One of the things I've thought a lot about lately is how mysterious making a living off of blogging seems to be. I mean, there aren't many bloggers who are really open about where the money comes from. Well, yes there's advertising, and yes there are affiliate links, and then sponsorships, but how does it all work? Which programs to join, which ad-networks to use, where to get sponsors, how much to charge them, how to grow the audience (besides the "make good content"), and more importantly, how to leverage that audience, what products sell etc etc etc? I want to demystify this for myself, and for you. So, I've decided to start sharing monthly income reports. It's a really scary step, but also a means for me to hold myself accountable, and motivate myself to work even harder to beat last months bottom line.

Now, I know money is a sore topic for some people. And, that for some, making money with blogging seems scammy. The thing is though, if I want to read quality blog content, someone has to create it. And, if someone is putting a lot of effort and time into creating amazing content, then I think it's more than ok if they make a decent living from it. We should ditch the preconceived notion, that a job is when you do something you don't really like in an office. I'd love to see more and more people create a job for themselves using the passions and skills they have. Wouldn't that be a much happier world? So, i hope you'll look at this as a sort of experiment to create a dream life, and you'll cheer me on as I try to figure it out. 

Readership stats in February

Since advertising rates are dependent on the size of the readership, I'm also going to share an overview of how many pageviews and unique readers I've had for the past month.

Pageviews (February 1st - 28th): 64 310

Unique Visitors: 16 259

Money made

1. My Etsy shop - 51.65€

2. Love watercolor art - 17.09€

3. Adsense (sidebar ads) - 23.33€

4. Article for Mood - 45€

5. Amazon.com affiliate program - 0€

6. Modcloth affiliate program - 0€

Total: 137.07€

Money spent

1. Etsy fees + shipping fees - 19.34€

2. Shipping for art - 7.05€

3. Material for art - 6.98€

4. Shipping supplies (wholesale) - 29.96€

5. Clothing labels - 30.82€

6. Supplies for projects - 30.8€

Total: 124.95€

Note: As you see, I invested practically everything back into the business. Buys I regret though are the shipping supplies, which I won't need after I close shop. But, maybe they'll come in handy at a future time.

Net total: 12.12€

Thoughts and future plans

As you can see, my blog is far from profitable at the moment. Something I'm more than eager to change. As you probably notice as well, affiliate programs are not working for me at the moment. I've had the Modcloth banner up for months, and made 0€ through it, so I've dropped it with the new design, and am planning to drop the whole program. It's just not a good fit for the content I create.

I'm still fairly new to Amazon, but at this point not convinced. I've sent people over (I've got close to 90 click-throughs), but no buys which means no money. I'm going to try it out for a few more months and then make my final decision. I've seen it work for others, so maybe I should just tweak the way I use it.

My goal for the coming month is to find new affiliate programs that would better suit the craft blogging niche. After all, I do want all the links I share to be relevant to my content. Do you feel affiliate marketing to be sleazy? Does it bother you when a blogger uses affiliate links?

As for ad networks, thus far I've stuck with Google Adsense, but I'm looking at other opportunities. I just started with Sovrn, so we'll see how that goes.

I've had no interest in my sidebar ads, and haven't actively looked for sponsors either. Sponsorships is something I'm really interested in exploring further, though. I have an ongoing collaboration with PandaHall, but it's free products in exchange for exposure kind of deal, so I'm not making any money with that. What I'm hoping to do is actively seek out sponsors and pitch them myself, rather than waiting for them to come to me. 

My Etsy shop has been a heart-ache for many months now. On the one hand, I'm in love with the idea of designing and creating collections of things and selling them. On the other hand, my business model for my shop is just not profitable. I couldn't make enough money even if I spent all day every day creating and listing new stuff, and all that stuff sold out immediately. That would also mean I wouldn't be able to blog. So, at this point, I'm thinking about calling it quits. There's no point in dragging along something that isn't working, putting my energy and efforts into it when the return-of-investment is slim to non. So, look out for a clearance sale some time in the next few weeks.

A new venture I'm taking on is expanding my blog into e-products, more specifically e-books, and e-courses further down the line. I have a series of books planned for the next few months, and the first one will come out at the end of this week. I'm officially done with all the projects, so all I need to do know is finish editing all the material.

I will be sharing a free project from the up-coming ebook and some behind the scenes peaks with my mailing list tomorrow. So, if you want in on the fun, join the mailing list by clicking on the button below the post, or by filling out the form in the sidebar.

Now, I'd love to hear from you. Did you find this post interesting? Would you love to follow my business story, as I go through B-School and try to make this a real, profitable business? 

If you have any thoughts or insights to share, I'd love to hear them in the comments!

xo. Hanna