I’m here with designer Nina Cooper and today we're talking all about charms and Nina you have a really wonderful way of telling a story through your designs. Yes, I like to use charms to tell stories and it's really fun because there's so many different silver charms, so just about any story you're in the mood to tell. So true, you can find a charm group to tell it with.
Right, well you have some beautiful examples here. So this first example is a woodland story and it was really fun. I got all the different creatures and growing things from a forest, so we have birds and acorns, flowers and we also drew in other elements like the gemstones and I've got, even the leather that I used for the cord has a bark tone to it, so it reinforces the whole forest theme. There’s a lot of things going on in this piece and one of the things I like to do is create frames, so placing a charm inside a larger link helps create a space. This bird looks like it's flying through the sky because true, it has a frame. The other thing that's really fun to do, is you can use open spaces like I did here with the tree to hang more dangles. Oh so you're using it more as a connector, exactly and create a richer environment and I love all the different layers you have, some, so many different textures going on here. it really does feel like a forest. Right and that's an important element to bring the texture of the branch and the bird wings. It creates a feel of the forest dominantly. One of the other really fun things to do then, once you create a statement piece like this, you can pull out little elements and create either simple pendants when your earrings and earrings exactly. So, we have I have three different earrings here mm-hmm from very, very simple to more going out at night. Sure and it's fun because sometimes you might wear the earrings without the necklace, but you're never going to wear a necklace without earring. Well that's a really good point and so this way you have three different earrings that match your big statement dramatic piece. I got that idea and so it gives you a lot of wardrobe options, yeah, really does and then you can also pull out little tiny pieces to create more of a conventional charm bracelet and I also use the gemstones as charms here by wire wrapping them on a head pin. So whether you wear these all together or separately, the earrings, the bracelet, the necklace, they're all telling that same woodland story, exactly, and you can customize it however you want for your mood so and even the colours they all just work really well together. While we're talking about colour, this necklace is a lovely example of mixing some different colours. I'm a really big fan of mixed metals, I think that the gold and silver really complement each other and some people think that's a no-no, but I love it. We like to break the rules too. Yeah it's got to break the rules, this necklace also demonstrates some other powerful techniques. One is just the repetition of shape, and varying the size. You can see the same leaf on your bracelet, that's another great way to use something like that. So on the bracelet we have the front and the back, you're using a charm as a connector here again. Right, which also I've done in the bracelet, on the bottom using it as a link. So you've actually wire wrapping right here and wire wrapping directly to the charm. I clipped off the jump rings on this one and then finally using the frame technique, like on the earrings, you can put any charm in the middle of the frame and it sets it off, just like you'd frame a picture. Oh that's so true and it's amazing what a big difference that really does highlight it and this piece is just gorgeous too. I love this necklace, it really, you can tell that all these winged things are taking flight here. Yes, the story there is a summer field and the birds and the butterflies are flying through the field and the chain creates that eerie sense of space. You’re right, it is of more whimsical or ethereal kind of feeling. Exactly, what about this theme you have here, about the way you combine the charms. The gears, this is nice because it demonstrates that charms can also be more modern and edgy mom and trendy. So this is a steampunk theme and we also brought in the leather, which is nice because it gives it that more urban feel. sure yeah and that's very popular right now and on the last piece that you have over here, it seems like you've combined the charms more as links again but it's in a totally different way than the leaf necklace that we saw. Exactly, so these are lotus charms but instead of focusing on the story of the Lotus I more focused on the shape and cluster them together to create a dramatic look and the little rubies on the bottom really bring that out. now you're using a lot of jump rings in that piece, so maybe if you could just take a moment here to show us how to connect these pieces using your jump ring. I know that a lot of times we're using charms with jump rings it's kind of, I don't know peas and carrots, and they go together. They do, you can either use jump rings or you can wire wrap the jump rings are nice because they create a very close connection. It’s very clean, so that the focus is really on the piece that you, the charm that you're working with, so even this branch is telling the story, exact your charms exactly, so ideally every element that you're using in your piece is part of telling the story. so I've slipped them both on and you want to be really careful that all of your elements are facing the right direction. oh right on, jump rings are pretty forgiving because you can open them up again if you make a mistake. oh yeah and then you just put them back together when you're ready to tell a story. You really need to be thinking about the charm, the colours, the connectors, the stringing materials. Every single layer of this can really be a piece of that whole entire story that you're telling with the charms. One final hint, is that if you lay everything out ahead of time you can see how it's going to lie, make adjustments before you do your final connections. That’s a great tip well thank you so much Nina.
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