Long time no post, as it seems. I've been busy lately with my marketing studies, and I had to neglect for a while jewelry. I have plenty of stock as there were some months when I worked like a madman (or woman), so at least I don't have to worry that I will run out of jewelry to sell for Christmas.
It is always good to make more jewelry than just the next piece that you are selling, particularly if you do this for more than just a passing hobby. Jewelry can sit nicely in their ziplock bags, they are usually small pieces and do not take too much space.
Which brings me, though, to my next point: cleaning jewelry.
I got a request from my online friend Mary for two bracelets, Stairway to Heaven and Lattice bright aluminium, and tonight when I took them out from the drawer where I usually keep jewelry for storage, I've noticed that in one of the ziplock bags there were two silver chainmail pieces together. I guess I didn't have enough bags at the time and I tried to save space by adding more than one in a bag. BIG mistake! Those two pieces are darkened and dull from oxidization.
So big tip here: never put two pieces of jewelry together. I am lucky because my trusted tumbler cleans up all pieces in a jiffy, but if you don't have a tumbler, you'll have to reverse to more conventional methods, and might not give you the very same results, unless you really spend some time cleaning...
As I'm about to put Mary's silver piece in the tumbler, I'll add the two 'tainted' ones as well, to be cleaned nicely, and then put each separately in its own bag.
Also another tip. One of the two pieces Mary bought is a bright aluminium chainmail bracelet. It is very easy to clean bright aluminium, simply wash the piece in soapy water to bring back the shine.
I don't recommend putting your bright aluminium with your silver jewelry in the tumbler. Actually based on my personal experience, I don't rcommend putting any two different metals together in the tumbler, to avoid weird (to say the least) results. Some people say they had no problems with them. I did. I used once silver with copper, and don't ask me the color of my 'cleaned' silver piece when it came out from teh tumbler. It took twice cleaning just the stainless steelshot with dishwashing liquid, and then adding the jewelry back in, just to get all cleaned up. What a mess!
