Caring for pearl jewelry
Posted by Administrator on Jan 27, 2006
Caring for pearl jewelry is a little bit harder than caring for all metal, or even metal and stone jewelry, because pearls are more easily damaged. Here are a few things to remember:
- Pearls are softer than most stones - so they can be scratched more easily. I advise storing pearls wrapped in a soft cloth, so that other jewelry in your jewelry box doesn’t scratch them.
- Pearls can be damaged by almost anything acidic - this includes salad dressing that contains vinegar, for example. After wearing pearls close to your skin, or if they may have come in contact with salad dressing or other mildly acidic food products, wipe them with a damp soft cloth. If the pearls are strung on silk, you don’t want to get the silk wet because it may stretch, but pearls that are set in metal or strung on wire can actually be rinsed off and cleaned with a very mild liquid soap.
- Because pearls can be damaged by chemicals in hair and cosmetic products, don’t use hairspray or spray perfume, deoderants, etc. while wearing your pearls. Ideally, pearls are the last thing you put on before leaving the house, and the first thing you take off when you return home.
- Don’t use a silver dip to clean jewelry containing both pearls and silver. In a recent post, I described a safer method of removing tarnish from silver jewelry containing pearls, using aluminum foil, baking soda, and hot water.
Preventing Tarnish
Posted by Administrator on Jan 25, 2006
Here are a few tips for preventing (or at least slowing) the tarnishing process:
- Store jewelry in a clean, dry environment
- Before storing your jewelry, clean it, and wipe metal parts with a silver polishing cloth (many brands contain chemicals that will help prevent tarnish from forming; they will also remove slight tarnish that has started forming)
- Consider purchasing anti-tarnish strips or anti-tarnish cloth (also called pacific cloth) for long-term jewelry storage
- Do not wear your jewelry in the shower, swimming pools, hot tubs, while cooking, or while using hair products or household cleaning products. These situations can expose the metal to sulphur and other chemicals that may cause oxides and sulfides (in other words, tarnish) to form.
- Clean and polish jewelry when tarnish starts - it is a lot easier to remove light tarnish (i.e. with a polishing cloth) than heavy tarnish.
Cleaning Silver
Posted by Administrator on Jan 19, 2006
Here’s an easy way to clean sterling silver jewelry that has gotten a little tarnished:
Put a piece of aluminum foil in the bottom of a bowl. Place the jewelry on top of the foil.
Cover the jewelry and aluminum foil with not quite boiling hot water, and add baking soda. I’ve heard it works even better if you add a little salt.
The baking soda should bubble, and when it stops bubbling, the tarnish should be gone.
To get silver really shiny, use a polishing cloth after cleaning. I use Sunshine brand cloths (which I also sell) but there are many silver polishing cloths on the market that will work. Goddard brand silver cloths are high-quality polishing cloths that can sometimes be found at shops selling beauty supplies or jewelry cleaners.
I do not recommend using commericial silver dips to remove tarnish from jewelry that is not exclusively sterling silver. The reason for this is that the chemicals in many of these products can damage pearls and other common jewelry materials, including some stones. While I can’t guarantee that the baking soda/aluminum foild method is safe for all jewelry materials, it is definitely safer for most common jewelry materials than using harsh chemicals.
Working with Resin
Posted by Administrator on Jan 11, 2006
Resin is an alternative material that is gaining popularity with jewelry and mixed media artists. There are many different brands of resin available for artists and crafters to experiment with.
The basics are the same though - follow the mixing instructions given by the manufacturer (resins come with two parts - resin and hardener - that have to be mixed together to startt he curing process - but the mixing ratios vary by brand), pour, drip or paint resin where you want it, and wait at least 24 hours, but often 72 hours, for the resin to completely cure.
I recently took a one-day workshop with mixed media jewelry artist Susan Lenart Kazmer on using resin, and I enjoyed it so much that I’ve been experimenting a lot on my own since the class with different ways to use resin in my jewelry work.
Some uses for resin:
- Filling a bezel - this is something we did in class. It is one of the easiest ways to start playing with resin. You take a bezel - which could be a traditional bezel made from silver, or a small found object like a beer bottle cap. Then you add small pieces of paper or found objects inside the bezel and cover them with resin. Once dry, you can drill a hole through the piece to make a pendant or earring dangle.
- Filling a mold - similar to filling a bezel, molds are available commercially (or can be created by the artist - but that’s a topic for another time) and filled with resin and small objects the same way bezels are filled. The difference is that when the resin is cured, it is removed from the mold, resulting in a very different effect.
- Covering objects - this is a little bit harder than filling molds and bezels, but objects can be covered in resin. I have successfully done this by painting thin layers of resin onto small objects and allowing each layer to cure before painting on the next layer. It is a very time consuming process, and it can be difficult to do without ending up with drips, but is also a means to create very unique pieces, as well as preserving small organic objects, such as small sticks. I heard about an art exhibit where parts of a human corpse were preserved in resin - definitely not something I’d ever want to attempt! But, it gives you an idea of what a versatile material resin is.
One of the things that is appealing to me about working with resin is that it is a relatively new material. There aren’t very many experts on working with resin, so every experiment I do is exciting. Unlike working with silver, a material I can ask thousands of experts for advice on, most people working with resin today are just starting to discover it and try new things. And it is so different from metalwork, yet easily combines with the metalwork I do. Silver bezels can be filled with resin to add color, texture, even images to what would otherwise be a very simple piece of jewelry.
I plan to write project tutorials for working with resin in the near future, but my advice to anyone thinking about trying resin is to experiment. Gather together some bezels, or found objects that could work as bezels, purchase some resin (the brand I use is called Colores and is available from Rio Grande), and see what you can come up with filling your bezels with the resin and small found objects. Color can be added by mixing in colored powders, such as the mica powders used by stampers. Almost any object small enough to put in a bezel can be embedded in resin. There aren’t many teachers right now doing resin workshops, but if you can find one, it’s a great introduction to the material, and having someone show you step by step how to mix, pour, color, etc. can be helpful.
Pearl Colors
Posted by Administrator on Jan 2, 2006
It used to be that pearls were (usually) white or off-white, but today, pearls come in just about any color you can think of. However, most of the colors - even some whites and off-whites - are not natural. Many of the new pearl colors are obtained by dying pearls after they are harvested. Freshwater pearls in particular are often dyed. Many of the dyes being used are very stable - they won’t wash off or fade - so in general, it is perfectly safe to purchase pearls and/or pearl jewelry in dyed colors. I’ve heard of people’s pearls fading with exposure to sunlight, or from being rinsed in water, but so far this has never happened to me personally.
Besides dying pearls, there are a few other methods used to color pearls. Heating them can produce desirable colors, as can irradiation. I don’t know very much about these processes, but I do know that these processes are used to turn freshwater pearls into darker, tahitian-like hues. I’ve never had problems with heated or irradiated pearls losing their color.
Another common process for changing the color of a pearl is bleaching. A lot of people believe that most pearls are white when they come out of the oyster, but this is not really true. It is more common for pearls to have a peachy or beigy color naturally, and they are then bleached if a bright white color is desired. I should point out here, though, that naturally white pearls do exist - they just aren’t as common as many people believe, based on the large quantities of white pearls on the market.
So, which colors are natural, and how can you tell if your pearls are natural in color? Often, you won’t be able to tell, but a few things to consider:
- Natural colors include white, pale pink, pale peach, off-white, beige, gold, grey, and black. Any color that is a ‘classic’ pearl color is probably a color that does occur in nature - but these colors are also produced using dyes, bleach, heat, and irradiation treatments (and probably other treatments that I’m not aware of yet).
- Colors that are likely dyed include very bright colors and very unnatural looking colors, and any pearls where you can see spots where the dye pooled a little and left spots on the pearl that are darker than the rest of the pearl. Sometimes you can see the dye near the holes of drilled pearls. However, it is not always possible to tell so easily whether a pearl has been dyed. Very expensive pearl jewelry should probably be checked by a gemologist for possible treatments, since they are not always visible to the naked eye.
- Colors that are likely to be either heated or irradiated include golds, blacks, purplish blacks, and greenish blacks. As I said before, I don’t know a lot about these treatments other than the fact that they are used to color pearls. Because black pearls and gold toned pearls are very popular today, freshwater pearls are often treated to obtain these desirable colors. It would be very hard to tell just by looking at a strand of pearls if they had been treated with heat or irradiation, so if it is important to know, I recommend getting advice from a certified gemologist. There is specialized equipment to detect these kinds of treatments.
- White pearls are often bleached. Not all white pearls have been bleached, so again, if you aren’t sure and you want to be sure, get them analyzed by a professional.
Those are the common treatments I know of to change the color of a pearl. I personally don’t have a problem with color treatments for pearls. The resulting colors are often very beautiful, and the colors seem to be very stable, in general. What I do have a problem with is misrepresentation - a dealer (or jeweler) should not claim that their pearls are natural colors unless they are absolutely sure that the pearls have not been treated. So many pearls these days are treated in some way to improve their appearance, and color treatments are very common. I never assume that pearls are natural colors, even if the color is one that could be natural, because you really never know unless you can afford to have them tested. My advice to people considering purchasing very expensive pearl jewelry is to have it tested, or buy it from a trustworthy and knowledgable source. My advice to people buying less expensive pearl jewelry is to simply understand that the pearls may have been treated in some way to improve their appearance. Sometimes the cost of having pearls tested is more than the cost of the pearls themselves, so it is not always practical.
