education

Jewelry Care and Cleaning Tips

To keep your jewelry clean and ready to wear, wipe off any excess make-up and skin oils by using a nub free, 100% cotton cloth. Store in jeweler’s tissue or a soft bag. Always use 100% cotton cloth, coarse fabrics often contain wood fibers or synthetics. These materials may impart fine scratches in the metal, especially on sterling silver. Bleach can cause gold and other metal alloys to breakdown leaving the metal irreparably damaged therefore you should always remember to remove your jewelry before handling products containing bleach. Other chemicals that can harm your precious jewelry are denatured alcohol, turpentine, acetone, and ammonia.

Purchased a jeweler’s cloth to keep your jewelry clean and shiny, and be sure to use a fresh cloth, the dirt left on the cloth from a previous use will leave scrapes and pits in the piece you are trying to clean and polish. Ultrasonic cleaners are great for cleaning some jewelry but they can damage many gemstones and the chemicals are not recommended for pearls and many other fine stones. Repeated use can also loosen the settings and you could lose your precious gems. Occasionally using an ultrasonic cleaners is fine.

For your sterling silver pieces, you can help postpone tarnishing by wrapping the piece in jeweler’s tissue paper and place it inside a plastic zip lock bag and seal.

If you have tarnished silver, remove the excessive tarnish, by polishing with a 100% cotton cloth and a good nonabrasive metal cleaner. Be sure to remove any remnants of the cleaner from gemstones and rinse thoroughly with clean water. Don't use toothpaste as you might have come across many sites which recommend the use of toothpaste. While the abrasives in toothpaste are necessary for your teeth, they can damage the surface of the metal. Also you should not use toothpaste on amber, lapiz, turquoise and other soft stones, doing so will permanently mar the fine polish produced by a skilled lapidary.

You can bring in your jewelry at our store any day
for a FREE cleaning and inspection.