Oh So Charming

n.
1. The power or quality of pleasing or delighting; attractiveness: a breezy tropical setting of great charm.
2. A particular quality that attracts; a delightful characteristic: A mischievous grin was among the child's many charms.
3. A small ornament, such as one worn on a bracelet.
4. An item worn for its supposed magical benefit, as in warding off evil; an amulet.
5. An action or formula thought to have magical power.

No worries, you're not in for an English lecture, but I found it interesting that the meaning of the word charm fit so well with this weeks texture feature. Not only does it mean using a small ornament to adorn your paper crafting items, it also helps your pages to become more pleasing, delightful, and attractive.  Who knew something so small could carry such a big bang? Secretly I even agree that adding small dangling trinkets can add a bit of magical mystic...which brings me to this weeks feature on my Halloween page.

Those lovely little charms are actually bobby-pins that I used to attach my letters.
Not necessarily what you would think of for a charm, but charms can be found in all shapes, colors, sizes, textures, and materials.  I found these little bobby-pins on sale a Jo-Anns years ago...they were such a good deal that I knew I would eventually find a use for them. I was planning on pulling them off the bobby-pins and dangling them from the letters, but using them to attach my letters instead saved a step and added a bit of pizzazz.

Charms can be used on a variety of projects to add a little extra something...think of it as frosting on the cake.
They are so easy to use as well, some ways include:

• Attached to ribbon
• Hanging from other embellishments
• Stacked one upon another for a chain link effect

• Bindings of Scrapbooks, or on mini-album rings
• Mini-album ribbon place markers (add charm to the end of ribbon bound in book to mark place or highlighted pages)
• Spiders dangling from webs
• Attached to hat pins in flowers
• Creating string line (clothesline or pennant line)

(Just like Angela did with her page "Celebrate Fall")

• As gift tags
• On a safety pin though paper layers
• Stacked one upon another for a chain link effect
• From torn paper curls
• On book covers to identify what it contains
• Hanging through punch outs on pages or card fronts
• Dangling from words

I hope these photos and ideas have inspired you to lead a "semi-charmed kind of life" because you can never go wrong by adding a little enticement to your projects. It is far to easy to be charming when you want to...so next time when you're stuck add a little ornamentation to your crafting and see how far it can get you!

Join me next Friday for our last installment in our Getting Textured series: Fabric. Until then...add a little texture to your life (and send your projects my way via ellasubmissions)!