Like many women, each fine jewelry item in my jewelry box tells a special story. Wearing a certain necklace reminds me of my grandmother, slipping on a particular ring prompts memories with my father.

Also like many women, I tend to hold onto certain trinkets for sentimental reason alone. Despite the fact that an item is no longer wearable, it remains in the safe for years due to its story. Rather than dispose of precious heirlooms or continue to clutter the jewelry safe, I encourage women to rework and re-imagine their prized pieces.

I recently did just that for my mother. With a safe chock full of unworn baubles, she did not even realize what treasures were hiding in the mess.

After a few hours of troving through my mother’s dusty jewelry boxes, we had unearthed a collection of sentimental charms. An old locket my mom wore as a kid was removed from its broken chain. Charms from a now too small bracelet from were clipped off, each representing one of her childhood loves. We re-discovered a very cool amulet (that opens to become a cross of pyramids) my father had given her and a delicate cross I had once worn in my teens. Lastly, we pulled aside my grandfather’s wedding band.

Beyond finding some very special trinkets each commemorating people and memories from throughout my mother’s life, we also managed to amass a substantial pile of junk jewelry that had been creating clutter in the safe – items beyond repair or too out of style to justify the cost of re-design.

Rather than keep a messy jewelry box consisting of mostly unworn baubles, we streamlined my mother’s jewelry collection. The items that were not worth keeping were melted for scrap gold value. This cash was then put towards creating a highly wearable, very personalized necklace.

To allow the charms we had discovered to really stand out, I chose a simple but substantial 14K yellow gold Italian oval link chain. Each charm was laid out carefully along the chain by shape and weight so as to create an aesthetically pleasing design that would hang well on the neck.

New elements were added to the necklace to finish the look. A gold disc was engraved with my grandmother’s script monogram and soldered together with my grandfather’s wedding band. On the back of the disc, a white gold date originally stamped into her old high school ring was fixed at center with her high school information was engraved around it to complete the charm.

Finally, a new large gold disc engraved with my mother’s initials was placed at the center of the necklace. A message with initials belonging to me, my father, and my brother was inscribed on the back.