If you wear silver jewelry, you are probably familiar with tarnish. Almost any metal used to make jewelry will tarnish over time. So, what is it? Tarnish is simply a reaction between the copper in sterling silver and oxygen in the air. You can do a few things to reduce the formation of tarnish.
But as I said, tarnishing is inevitable, and jewelry gets dirty. So here are my recommendations for cleaning your jewelry. Regardless of your chosen method, be sure to rinse the chemicals off your jewelry and dry it with a soft cloth after cleaning. Please don’t use any of these methods on pearls and if your piece includes porous stones, stick to mild soap and water.
If your jewelry is just a little dirty, some mild soap and water will do the trick.
Combine a small squirt of Dawn Dish Washing Liquid with warm water in a small bowl. Soak your piece for a couple of minutes. Then use a soft toothbrush to remove build-up on the piece of jewelry. Rinse thoroughly and then dry the jewelry with a soft cloth. *You can use your favorite dishwashing liquid, Dr. Bronners, or other soaps; just avoid ones that claim to soften your skin or have harsh detergents.
If you have minor tarnish to remove, try Sunshine Polishing Cloths. They are embedded with a micro abrasive and cleaning agent. The polishing cloths quickly remove tarnish. They are great to keep near your jewelry for a quick sprucing up. You can reuse this cloth until it is covered in tarnish. These can be used on the metal, but be very careful that you don’t rub them on porous stones or pearls.
If you have tarnish build-up, you will need a chemical reaction to remove it. You can choose a home remedy or purchase chemicals that are ready-made.
My favorite home remedies are the lemon solution and the aluminum foil solution. Both are doable with everyday items you probably have in your kitchen right now and will take about a half an hour.
The Lemon Solution needs lemon juice (citric acid), salt, mild soap, a toothbrush, and a soft cloth. The acid in the lemon will remove the tarnish, and the salt will speed up the reaction. This is a great use for your lemons that are a little past their yummy point. If you aren’t ready to use them immediately, just pop the lemon juice in the freezer until you are ready.
The Aluminum Foil Solution needs hot water, salt, baking soda, a piece of aluminum foil, a small dish, and something to stir with, like a wooden chopstick or a plastic spoon, that is not your stainless-steel silverware. Trust me on this one. You will also want some mild soap and a soft dry cloth.
If you are interested in learning more about the chemical reaction that makes this work, I found a great article by Mel Science that talks about the chemistry. https://melscience.com/US-en/articles/how-clean-tarnished-silver-15-minutes/
Chemical cleaners
I have used Blitz Gem and Jewelry Cleaner. This one comes with a packet of concentrated cleaner that you add water to. It has a little metal basket to place your jewelry in, and you just put the lid back on and swish it around for a few minutes. Rinse well and dry with a soft cloth.
You can also prevent tarnish with Anti-tarnish bags and Anti-Tarnish strips. I’ve had success with Intercept strips in sealed bags. You can cut a piece to size and place it in a box. It’s just important that the box or bag be closed to maintain the life of the strip.
I hope this helps you keep your treasures clean and shiny. This is a good time to check any connections, clasps, prongs, and your chain for wear. As always, if you have any questions, just reach out, I’m happy to answer any questions you have.
*These methods have worked for me, but use at your own risk. If in doubt, your piece of jewelry is an heirloom, or very expensive, it's worth taking it to a jeweler for professional cleaning.
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Peach was a challenge because I have nothing resembling peach in my color palette. I mixed colors to get peach and it was really interesting. In paint I would have mixed red, yellow and white. In glass that gave me a really pretty brown. In the end, I used opal yellow, rhea and white to make a nice vibrant peach. I preferred the depth I got with a combination of opaque and transparent colors. I might be getting into color mixing, lots of fun, even if my first attempt made brown instead of peach. Here are the rods I chose to start with.
Then I was stymied on what to make, I tried a feather bead and it was ummmmm gross. These colors did not play well with the ivory background.
However, they did make lovely dot beads and the transparent made gorgeous hollow beads. I never figured out a transparent peach, but I really liked this color challenge. It’s interesting to add colors that are outside my normal palette. These beads will go in my trunk show this week, if I don’t decide to make them into a jewelry set. I made this necklace with some of the beads.
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When I first started selling beads and jewelry, I bought this huge box of padded envelopes. They lasted for years! Well it was finally time to reorder padded envelopes. Research ensued. Padded 100% paper, a good option, recycled and recyclable. Not reusable, not pretty, and they are heavy, which increases shipping costs. But the biggest problem? Labels don’t stick to them vey well, you know the thing with the address and bar code that ensures the item gets where it’s going. So back plastic? Enter EcoEnclose. 52% Recycled content bubble mailers, that are reusable! Yay! Most of what I ship is going to get turned into jewelry, so fingers crossed, my new recycled content reusable bubble mailers will get reused, they have two sticky strips, so easy peasy to use again. Happiness. Hoping that by the time I have to order again, they will have 100% recycled content mailers. https://www.ecoenclose.com/shop/recycled-mailers/50-recycled-bubble-mailers/
Then, I rand out of labels. In my search for eco friendly shipping material, I inadvertently learned about labels. Mostly printable labels, I found out, are on the silicon coated paper, which it turns out is not curbside recyclable. And don’t get started on the labels themselves. Ugh, so hard to find quality labels with ANY recycled content. I want to be part of the solution. So I can’t tell you how happy I was to find these labels from EcoEnclose, 100% recycled content! The backing papers are 100% recycled content and curbside recyclable. I can just stick the backing paper right into my recycle bin! Yahoo. m/6-5-x-4-5-zero-waste-white-shipping-label-200-labels/
There are some other small things I doing the studio to try to be eco friendly. Instead of cleaning my beads under running water, I clean my beads in a small plastic bin. Just fill it up with some water, submerge the beads and clean the bead release out of the holes. The water then gets put back into nature… I water my plants with it. I use old tshirts to clean my glass. My biggest win this year was that we installed solar panels and battery backup on the house, so my studio is powered by the sun! YAHOO! There are more things, on my list… stickers. Both expensive and not recyclable, so those are up next. Do you have any suggestions for eco friendly labels? I’m on the hunt before I run out.
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This week's Technique Tuesday is placing fine silver dots on to a Lampwork Bead in a specific pattern. My usual way of placing silver dots on a glass bead is to spot heat the bead, get the wire to stick and then melt it in, usually resulting in a line or gentle curve. For this bead I wanted a specific pattern, so I switched it up by first balling up the silver on the end of the wire, spot heating, touching the dot of silver where I want it to go and melting the rest of the wire off.
]]>One of the interesting things about glass is that certain glasses are more likely to spread out. Ivory is one of those colors. You can see it in this moon bead where the beach color and the night sky meet, I gave it a little extra heat to pull the ivory glass up onto the black Galss to create this lovely misty effect on the bead.
]]>You can see this ring and other flowers in the floral collection!
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The Flow Magazine's 16th Annual Galler of Women in Glass is available here:
https://simplecirc.com/the-flow-magazine/item/4317/the-flow-magazine
The necklaces I talk about in this blog can be found here:
Poppies: https://perledivetro.com/collections/fall-collection/products/falling-for-fall
Spots and Dots: https://perledivetro.com/collections/casual-collection/products/spots-and-dots-turquoise-ivory-and-sage-necklace
]]>But the real pleasure for me has been to see how the artists in the club come together, the comments on work they like or conversations on new techniques they have tried this month. Some successful, some not. But it's a lovely camaraderie that emerges in the middle of the competition. We have a mix of 2D and 3D artist, some do both. Some people submit work once or twice a year, some participate every month. Some artists have distinct style or voice, you know instantly whose work it is. Some artists will surprise every month, because you never know what medium they will choose. I really like to try new things, but with in a specific medium, all of my work involves glass. And recently someone on Facebook said they were scrolling through and though "oh, that looks like Shelly's work" and it was, so I think that I am finding my voice. I hope you will enjoy it.
See January's submission here: https://www.eastvalleyartists.com/artist-of-the-month
Check out my friend Sloane's amazing pottery on Instagram @handmade_by_sloane or check out here Gallery https://www.eastvalleyartists.com/sloane-perroots
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You can see the art show here: http://www.eastvalleyartists.com/public-show-landing-page1
In order to vote, choose one of the 5 categories, check out the art work and then scroll down to the bottom of the page, enter your name, your email address (which is only used for contacting you if you win), the number of your favorite piece and choose the giveaway item you want. Today at 8 pm a winner will be chosen via random number generator.
You can see my artist's profile here: http://www.eastvalleyartists.com/shelly-woollvin
If you look around at the other artist's profiles, there are two more chances to be entered in the drawings. scroll to the bottom of each page to find the entry forms. You can choose the same giveaway for all seven entries, or choose to enter into all three entries.
]]>Here is where you can find my favorites that have gone online this year.
East Valley Artists - www.eastvalleyartists.com. This is a juried show and a sale. you can vote for people's choice awards, you can even win small giveaways, two of my favorite's are in today's giveaways. You can see my page and my art here. http://www.eastvalleyartists.com/public-show-3d and my artist page here http://www.eastvalleyartists.com/shelly-woollvin (full disclosure I am President of this club)
CT English Home and School Club https://www.ctehsc.org/fundraising/holiday-craft-faire. This show benefits the school and they sell wreathes to raise money for the 8th graders trip to Washington DC. They also have kids as vendors. They make jewelry and wooden boxes and other things. My favorite this year is lego jewelry. You can see posts and links for all their vendors on the Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1910783055808591 or you can see their Faire Web page here https://www.ctehsc.org/fundraising/holiday-craft-faire
Lynbrook Instrumental Music Boosters https://www.facebook.com/limb.faire This is usually a really fun one day show, where the band members help set up and take down and carry all your stuff to your car. They are a really great group and I as disappointed to not be in their show this year. Just really nice people.
The largest online show is SFETSY, were 300 vendors are in a great look book and there are live demos and videos introducing the vendors. I will be live today at 2:00 https://sfetsystreetteam.splashthat.com/ you can also see my Etsy shop on this page.
There are other favorites, but they are not online, this year. Hopefully I can tell you all about them next year if we are back in person!
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Incase you were curious about how glass beads are made, I wanted to share two opportunities to see me making beads live!
Today11/27, I will be live on Facbook on the East Valley Artist Page. I'm going to make some of my cute snowmen. We are hosting live demos everyday at noon, now through Tuesday. https://www.facebook.com/eastvalleyartists
Tomorrow, Friday 11/28 I will be live on SF Etsy from 2:00 to 2:30 Pacific. SFETSY is a group of 2700 Esty sellers from the San Francisco Bay Area. 300 Artists and makers will be featured in this online show. You can catch that on their page at https://sfetsystreetteam.splashthat.com/ This is where you will be able to see me live on Saturday. I will make a small flower tomorrow.
Hope to see you there!
]]>I am honored to have been awarded both 1st and 3rd place, in the 3D category, of East Valley Artists Annual Art Show this year, you can see my profie here:
http://www.eastvalleyartists.com/shelly-woollvin
]]>You can see more about the show at www.eastvalleyartists.com, where you can vote for People's Choice Awards and enter to win giveaways donated by the artists in the Show. You can see my work in the 3d category. http://www.eastvalleyartists.com/public-show-3d
You can also see my artist page at http://www.eastvalleyartists.com/shelly-woollvin
I hope you will stop by and check it out!
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