Charms for Your Bracelet

Posted by Maire Loughran Jul 15, 2007

I've posted the introductory article regarding the topic of making your own charmed jewelry. One of my recent blogs discussed the lock charms at Tiffany and Co. These lock charms are great because you can open and close the lock to rearrange the charm on the necklace or bracelet. Unfortunately, they are also quite expensive. The Tiffany and Co. logo sterling silver charm is $125. Yikes! I did not take the time to check out how much the karated gold ones were - probably triple.

The second article that really gets into the practical instructions on how to make the bracelet will be published in about a week. Prior to that start checking out different online vendors to make your charm selection.

You can also try any local craft store to see what they offer. I was at Pearl's last year and I bought a bag of 5 cat related charms to make a bracelet for a cat lover friend. The charms were really cute and the whole bag cost under $5 - of course they were not sterling silver - they were made from some sort of base metal.

If you are interested in duplicating the charms shown on the surfer girl charm bracelet in the article, with the exception of the mermaid charm, I bought all these charms at Fire Mountain Gems. The mermaid charm is my own design. I sketched the original line drawing, had my graphic artist refine the artwork and then forwarded it to a casting company for fabrication.

The design was based upon my research of mermaid lure and of the voodoo legend of Sirene, Protective Loa of the Oceans. So far, I have yet to get that line of jewelry up and running. That is the way it is - sometimes a year goes by before you can bring an idea to production. The closest I can come to my design is at Silver Enchantments. They also have some at Chains and Charms.

While I have shopped many times over the years at Fire Mountain Gems with complete satisfaction, I have never shopped at either Silver Enchantments or Chains and Charms. Just make sure you check out their return policy prior to finalizing your order.