Amigurumi charms

I had a lovely request from someone on Etsy recently. This lady had recently bought my "Charlie the Chicken" bangle bracelet and wanted to commission another charm from me. At the beginning of the year, she had bought her sister a Amigurumi knitted toy - called "little bun" when her sister was having a tough time. This little knitted bun turned out to be the one thing that connected the two of them together during an otherwise sad time and the only thing that brought a smile to their faces..... The photo above shows the little guy who was to be my inspiration for a charm. He was created by moonscreations

Now she wanted to try and capture a piece of what could bring a smile to their faces during a difficult time and have something to remind her of it...and so she asked me to make her a silver charm of her Amigurumi little bun. For those of you who don't know, Amigurumi is the Japanese art of knitting or crotcheting a small stuffed animal.The pervading aesthetic of amigurumi is cuteness! To this end, typical amigurumi animals have an over-sized spherical head on a cylindrical body with undersized extremities.
Anyhow, I contacted the person - Marcy, from Moonscreations, who made the original bun and checked with her that she didn't mind me using her design. She was lovely - and in fact asked me to make her one as well!

And so in the end, I made three little Amigurumi-style little bun silver charms, in case one of them didn't work out......
Hopefully the "cuteness" comes through.

And again, it was another example of a story behind a piece that was just so touching. Whilst I haven't elaborated on the details here - my knowing the reason behind the creation makes it so much a richer experience for me. And richer too that this person would want to tell me about it......

And whilst it's all too easy to often think to myself that I just create jewelry.....and what's the point of that??..... - projects like this show a different side of it. Thanks Iza. Hope your new little bun brings a smile on your face when you need it most of all.

Mother's charms

I seem to be getting more and more commission work to make individual charms for people. They generally tend to involve creating a silver miniature version of something that is meaningful to the person or their friend - ranging from either a pet, to a child's favourite toy, to a silver version of a larger household item, to........

I'm thinking that commission charms is something I could get more into. I do like making things only once, and it's great to hear people's stories behind what they are choosing me to create. I'm doing one this week - but I'll write about that later..... Lovely story behind it....

Anyhow, in the meantime, I've created some simple toy charms that would be suitable for a mother's charm bracelet, or one could go on a bookmark, or key ring or.....

Here's a little toy train



















A plane




















A doll's house



















And a rocking horse.



















Sweet little reminders of your children.......