Are you looking for a gift for a young ballerina? The ideal present may be a surprise to you - charms.

I once ran a dance store and my biggest seller was a silver pointe shoe charm pendant. Mothers and young girls alike loved it!

That was a long while ago, before the current enthusiasm for charms like Pandora and Troll. So, considering a ballet charm was so sought after then, I can only imagine how sought after it would be now!

These days, you can find a good variety of dance-related charms and charm bracelets. There are ballet slippers (one shoe or two!), ballet dancers in a variety of arabesques, and tutus for ballet dancers. For flamenco lovers, there are flamenco fans and sometimes, flamenco dancers. I've seen ballroom dancing couples,tap dancers, and shoes for tap, tango, Irish and Scottish dancing.

There's a lot less selection in Pandora charms, in any of the lookalike products. Pandora charms must be chunky to allow for the hole through the middle, so it's challenging to design a delicate charm to reflect the nature of dancing. I have seen some ballet shoe charms but they are too chunky for my taste!

You will find quite a few Pandora charms engraved with words like "dance" or "I love to dance" - and their Murano glass beads have incredible swirling colors which seem to be dancing all by themselves!

You will often hear the expression "lucky" charms. I always understood that meant charms shaped like a four leaf clover or a horseshoe. However I recently heard the story of a woman who received a charm bracelet for her birthday. It didn't include a horseshoe, but she soon noticed that when she wore it, good things happened -and when she wasn't wearing it, went wrong. She said nothing to anyone else, but it ultimately became so obvious, even her son commented! She explained it by saying that the bracelet was given by her children, and the charms were chosen with love, so it was imbued with a special quality. Perhaps that's a good reason to give a charm bracelet!

If you're having difficulty deciding between the different charms - it may help to know that I found the ballet shoe necklace was always far more popular than similarly priced dancing figure pendants.