Cleaning Your Silver The Eco-Friendly Way
Find out how to clean your silver without harsh chemicals - you can find everything you need in your kitchen!
About the Tutorial
One of the unfortunate facts about sterling silver is that it does tarnish over time. The copper present in the alloy reacts to moisture and sulphur in the air, causing the tarnishing reaction. High humidity and air pollution both make silver tarnish faster, as do chemicals such as hand sanitiser, hairspray, perfume, deodorant, body lotion, bleach and more.
Silver polishing cloths are great for helping with mild tarnish, but with dirtier silver a little extra help is needed. Polishes such as silver dip are available, but I prefer to replace them with something a little kinder to the environment - and that's what this short video tutorial will show you!
A quick safety note - safety for your jewellery that is... this method uses hot water so never try it on jewellery containing stones, beads, pearls or enamel as you could damage them.
This video class is just one in a collection of free tutorials. You can enrol on each one individually or enrol on the whole bundle so that you don't miss out on new classes!
Tools and Materials
To clean your silver using this method you will need:
* tarnished silver (without beads, stones, enamel or pearls)
* a plastic tub or pyrex dish
* aluminium foil and bicarbonate of soda
* hot water for the process and cool clean water for rinsing
* towel to dry the silver
* silver polishing cloth for any last stubborn marks
Course Curriculum
Joanne Tinley
Tutor and Founder of The Jeweller's Bench
The Jeweller's Bench is run by Joanne Tinley. She has been making her own jewellery for as long as she can remember and left her first career as a school teacher to set up business as a jewellery designer and tutor 15 years ago. She is
self-taught and like many people started with wire and beads. Learning how to solder, however, opened up a whole new world of jewellery making, one that she is keen to share!