South Sea Pearl

A sense of family history is important.  Some families have a great-grandmother’s engagement ring, a silver tea set a grandad’s brother found at an estate auction or a plastic chip and dip set in the shape of  platypus your mother received as a wedding gift.  You don’t have to dig an old broken vase out of your father’s attic to kick-start an heirloom tradition.  Rather, initiate your own family tradition today by collecting Italian Charms for your children. 

These charms, personally assembled by you into an Italian charm bracelet are much sturdier than fragile old china and can become a much more interesting conversation piece.  And, they can continue to add meaning as each generation can add new links to the charm bracelet to reflect their own life and interests, which keeps the tradition significant, meaningful, and alive. 

So how do you get started?  Discover the three steps to start the process of creating an heirloom:

1) Get started with an Italian charm starter bracelet.

You can start your tradition inexpensively with starter bracelets.  Starter bracelets are often simple, 14 link bracelets with links that are easy to link and unlink.  The importance of the starter bracelet is that it will allow you to add in personalized charms over time without running the risk of loosing loose charms; it also makes a bracelet-in-progress wearable long before you have collected all of your charms.  You’ll want to take your time as you build your collection over many years.

2) Purchase personal charms over time as they correspond to events in your children’s lives. 

When there is a new addition to your family, choose a charm with the appropriate birthstone.  Perhaps add a charm that reflects, in some way, the community of the birth.  From that day forward, pay attention:  what do your children enjoy?  What are their hobbies and pastimes?  What subjects interest them in school?  To which activities do they dedicate their free time outside of school?  Choose an Italian charm that represents each of those interests, accomplishments and milestones.

3) Give the bracelets to your children or other family members. 

This may be the hardest step!  After years of collecting and caring for the Italian Charms, you might grown somewhat attached to them.  But for the tradition to continue and grow, you must pass the bracelets on.  Select an occasion that is momentous, a transitional moment in the life of the bracelet’s recipient.  Find a time just before a wedding or after a graduation celebration when you can have some quality, unrushed time together.  Explain to them the significance of each of the charms, and how and why you selected them as you did.  Demonstrate how and where they might add on to their charm bracelets to keep the tradition alive, and how, one day, you hope that they will pass their charm bracelets on to their children (after having added charms that reflect the important events in their own children’s lives, of course).

Leave that old vase in your father’s attic.  Start a dynamic new tradition for your children today.  Follow these simple steps to get started; you will find that the tradition takes on a life of its own after several years.  Perhaps you might even involve your children in the selection of new charms each year!  Just think, one day someone will add a charm that says: “I Love My Grandparents.”