Nora came into the atelier on a Tuesday afternoon with one idea and no plan. Her mum was turning sixty, and every gift she'd thought of felt like something you could buy anywhere. A bagcharm felt different. It would be small enough to carry every day, and it would mean something only her mum would understand.

She started with a watermelon charm, because her mum grew up spending every summer at her grandparents' place near Ostend, where a slice of watermelon after the beach was non-negotiable. Then came a scattering of stones in green and red, picked less for symbolism and more because they looked right next to each other. A tiny silver bead here, a chip of something rougher there. Nora built it the way you'd build a sentence you're not sure how to finish, adding a word, taking a step back, adding another.

What she ended up with wasn't symmetrical, and it wasn't trying to be. It looked like it had been made by someone who knew the person it was for, which of course it had.

Her mum has carried it on her everyday bag since. Nora tells us she catches her checking it's still clipped on before she leaves the house, the way you'd check for keys.

We hear versions of this story more than people might expect. A charm made for someone else ends up saying more than a card would have, mostly because it took longer to make than it would have taken to write.

If you're thinking about your own version of this, our workshops are built exactly for afternoons like Nora's, no plan required, just an idea and a bit of time.

— Paola