Pebble Time Steel with Vario Mono Plaid 22mm 2-piece strap by #varioclub member Nev Rawlins

I am a Project Manager at a Financial institution in the UK. In my spare time, I design and develop cryptic watchfaces for the Pebble smartwatches.

I have always loved the cryptic watches produced by Tokyoflash, who used to run a Design Studio Blog posting designs from fans. These watchfaces are more fun than just simple time-tellers - they look good and as you have to put in some effort to read them, they are good for the brain too!

I have kept in touch with some of the people who submitted designs to Tokyoflash and have used some of their designs for Pebble watchfaces as well as anything that inspires me in my own designs. I now have over 75 watchfaces on the Pebble App Store. They are mostly cryptic and are what I call "wrist art".

I have, in the past, always gone for metal straps for my watches, as I prefer these to leather straps. When I saw the Vario designs, I immediately fell in love with them - another wonderful form of wrist art! So I decided to try these straps. The original one-piece straps were not ideal as the charging port for the Pebbles is on the back and I use a docking station. However, when I discussed this with Ivan, he agreed that a 2-piece version would be viable and I got some of his early versions. These straps not only look good, but a very comfortable.