03.29.09
Buy organic teas, herbs and more at MountainRoseHerbs.com
03.24.09
Jewelry Care and Jewelry Cleaning Tips
How to Care for Your Jewelry
Cautions when Cleaning Jewelry and Gemstones
To care for your jewelry and keep it clean and ready to wear, gently wipe off excess make-up and skin oils after each wearing. Use a nub free, 100% cotton cloth and gently wipe the piece clean using only the soft pads of your fingers. Store in jeweler’s tissue or a soft bag.
To help retard tarnish on sterling silver, wrap the piece in jeweler’s tissue paper and place it inside a plastic zip lock bag and seal.
When cleaning sterling silver remember that it is a very soft metal and can easily be marred by a fingernail or wadded piece of fabric pushed roughly against the metal surface. For this reason, use one of the following methods to clean heavier soils and tarnish:
To remove fingerprints, light grease or dirt, add a small amount of mild liquid soap to a half cup of warm water, soak 2-3 minutes, rinse thoroughly with clean water and dry completely before storing in an air tight plastic bag.
Be very careful when using any soaking method to clean jewelry that has soft stones such as amber, lapis lazuli, or turquoise. Extended soaking in any solution may harm the polish on the stone.
When caring for your jewelry, never use anything but 100% cotton as a polishing cloth since paper, polyester, and coarse fabrics often contain wood fibers or synthetics. These materials may impart fine scratches in the metal, especially on sterling silver.
Gems requiring special care:
Opals require special care. Never use an ultrasonic, never use chemicals and avoid heat. Don’t put your opal ring on the window sill when washing your hands or the dishes as strong sunlight can dry out the water in opals which could cause hazing or color change.
Pearls. Protect from scratches; perfumes and household chemicals which can wear away the nacre or cause color change.
Soft stones like lapis, malachite, turquoise, amber and opals can easily be scratched by pin stems and the edges of other jewelry. Protect pieces with these gemstones by wrapping them in jeweler’s tissue and storing separately.
03.11.09
How jewelry designer can survive in slow economy times
For those who are struggling now with disappearing sales at this uneasy time, my word is – use difficult times to your advantage!
Yes, your read it right and I am not crazy. People are buying much less of everything not essential to survival, so jewelry sales are not on the rise no matter of what are you trying to do. That’s why my 3-dimentional action plan for difficult times like that would be:
#1. Invest in yourself
Learn new techniques of jewelry making, improve your skills, take a training course, re-think your strategies, designs, re-structure your collection, re-do your website, learn how to take better pictures of your jewelry. Everything that you have learned – it’s yours forever, no matter of what!
#2. Network and promote
Get involved in professional groups, make new connections with fellow designers, with jewelry retailers, with manufacturers; promote yourself on internet social networks. Information can become useful in no time – good times are ahead!
#3. Volunteer
Find local charities, hospitals; give free lessons in your local community, donate some jewelry to a good cause. It’s all can turn into future sales.
That was my thought of the day.
If you agree with that, or even more so – if you disagree with me – please, leave your comments. I will be happy to hear from you.
03.03.09
Another way of taking jewelry pictures
Please feel free to leave a feedback!
This is something new that I want to do – make some nice drawings and use them for picture of my jewelry. What do you think?
- Earrings on my drawing
New way of displaying my jewelry
I am trying to find better ways to display and photograph my jewelry. Here just a few attempts:
