Hello!
I am currently on a quest I did NOT think was going to be so very
difficult. I have been wanting to do chainmaille watches for a while
now, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. I know there are gazillions
of watch heads to be found out there for beading, most of them base
metal, silver plated if you look around hard enough, and all with
beading loops on the ends. Or “ribbon watches”. Back in 2005 I made a
chainmaille band for a sterling watch head I bought at Rio. Mother’s
Day gift to myself. It may have been the only head they offered,
or maybe there were a couple, but I liked what they offered so it
didn’t matter there wasn’t much to choose from. Simple design, which
is what I like. Spring bar, not a “beading watch”. I unfortunately
got it wet recently (not dead, just slow) and decided that if it had
cost about $30 new, it wasn’t worth the cost of repairing it (I
recently spent a good amount of money to get my husband’s
“accidentally laundered” watch repaired). I went to my newest Rio
catalog, and to my amazement there wasn’t a sterling watch head to be
found! I called and no, they don’t carry them anymore. Just a few
base metal “beading” ones. I knew that I also wanted to try to do
some for my last few shows this year, so I was disappointed I
couldn’t get them as easily as I thought. Since then, I have spent
HOURS and HOURS trolling the internet looking for watch heads.
Painful!!! The only sterling ones I’ve found have an ugly logo on
them, “Trendz”, with an obnoxious red Z at the end. Why would I want
that if I’m paying for a sterling watch? Plus, there were only two
designs, and one of them is a heart. No thanks. I eventually decided
that silver plated was going to have to be good enough. Better than
just plain “mystery base metal”, and there are a fair number of
designs to choose from, even if I also had to manage working around
the lack of a spring bar. So, I’m not completely satisfied with where
I am with that, but it’s OK for now. So then at my show this past
weekend, a woman commissioned a watch from me, but then later called
to say she really wears more gold, she’d like the “gold plated”
option. Back to the web!!! I FINALLY managed to find a few out there,
and fortunately the options are fine, although minimal. No glaring
red Z.
So, at the end of this long note, my questions are 1) where does one
find a nice selection of sterling watch heads? 2) are there not more
gold plated ones out there to choose from, or even gold filled for
that matter? 3) can one not find heads with spring bars at all-
sterling, silver plated or gold plated?
Thanks!!
Lisa
Designs by Lisa Gallagher