Tag Archives: charms

Flat pressed flower charm with sterling back

I found this charm for 50 p in a charity shop the other day. It’s made from real pressed flowers under a clear resin dome, and the backing is stamped with “silver”. It’s really pretty but probably not worth listing in my Etsy shop, because whatever I could realistically charge for it would be eaten up by Etsy’s fees pretty soon – gone are the days when Etsy was way cheaper than eBay.

So what to do with this sweet little vintage charm? For now, I’ve stashed it away with a collection of flat charms that I have – mostly spinners, coins and town crests. At some stage I will “build” a charm bracelet out of them: a charm made entirely with two-dimensional charms.

Mawi ring. With charm. Very large, dangly charm.

This is something I bought a while ago for £10 in a charity shop, thinking I would sell it on eBay and make a fortune. Well, a decent profit anyway. Sadly, the good people of eBay weren’t interested so I was stuck with it. This is the item in question:

As you can see, it’s a rather lovely cutwork silver ring, featuring a bird sitting on what looks like a vine laden with luscious, ripe grapes. Dangling from the bottom is a charm with wood and semi-precious beads, and a silver token. There is also a metal tag with “Mawi” stamped on it. I happen to know that Mawi is a high end costume jewellery brand that’s been sold in places like Liberty (I don’t know if they still are though – haven’t visited Liberty in ages). But this marriage of ring and charm is incongruous somehow, not to mention rather impractical. What’s more, I couldn’t find another version of this combo when I did a Google search on Mawi stuff, which generally veers more towards the statement-necklace-with-studs end of the spectrum.

What did I end up doing? Well, I took the charm off, threaded it onto a plain narrow silver band ring and put it on my handbag. I wear the ring often, because it’s just my style.