How to look after your (resin and silver) jewellery

Jewellery care advice & tips

with a focus on caring for jewellery containing eco-resin.

In this post are a few of my top tips for keeping your jewellery looking at its best for as long as possible. Most of these suggestions you can apply to pretty much all types of jewellery and are general good practice, although I am going to focus this more towards specifically looking after the eco-resin pieces which I create.

Much of my handmade jewellery pieces contain esin elements. I use a type of eco-resin made by a company in Cumbria. This is a water clear, UV stable epoxy resin with a reduced carbon footprint, power and water consumption, helping to minimise the environmental impact of the end product. It’s important to me that I am aware of the environmental impact of my little business, by thinking about the effect not only of the materials I use, but my packaging, marketing materials, power use…and much more! I’m digressing slightly, but it’s all vital stuff!

The benefits of using resin are not only that I can encapsulate my layers of artwork inside it – but that it’s extremely lightweight (wonderful for creating dramatic earrings that are amazingly easy to wear!) and it’s quite easy to cut & sand whilst working.

Here you can see examples of my one-off pieces from my ‘Painterly’ collection.

It’s an incredible material which, when looked after in the right way can last a lifetime.

Below is my advice on how to achieve this…

Scratches

It is pretty resilient stuff, however, if you are wearing a resin piece day to day and it’s seeing a lot of action (rings are especially vulnerable) then scratches may start to build up and cause the piece to look a bit scuffed. Try to avoid bumping your jewellery, I stongly advise you not to sleep with it on or wear it whilst exercising, etc. Some scrapes can be solved with sanding, or another coat of resin – but it’s best avoided!

Polishing

If you do notice some scratching or cloudiness appear over time, sometimes a damp microfibre, chammy or silk cloth will polish your piece nicely or you can use plastic polish. A good plastic polish brand is Novus – you could use the #2 to renew the finish, and the #1 to add a final shine – and then you can periodically use the #1 to keep it in great condition. You probably don’t need the #3 polish, but it won’t hurt to use it.

Heat & Water

This is very important, try to avoid extreme heat!

Ultimately, resin is a type of plastic and has a relatively low melting point, so it’s best not to leave it out in direct sunlight for long periods of time as this may lead to the resin softening/clouding or degrading. Some resin does not react well to UV rays, the type of resin that I use is UV stable, however, it’s just best practice to keep it looking its best.

Resin is water resistant, not waterproof – so taking it off whilst showering, washing up, swimming, etc is advised. This point is especially important if the piece also contains metal (which all my pieces do) as exposure will cause tarnishing (blackening/discolouration of the metal) to happen more quickly.

Chemicals

Watch out for particularly aggressive ones – acetone (nail varnish remover) is especially harmful to resin. It’s best also to avoid it coming into too much contact with hair spray, perfume (if alcohol based), cleaning solutions, anti-bac products…all these things can potentially cause the resin to become scaly, yellow, or break down.

Oils from your skin can also eventually start to ruin the surface of resin. It takes a long time to build up, but it can be removed by using mild dish soap. Dish soap is made to cut through grease, so applied with some warm water it can remove oils. It’s best to do this before storing your jewellery, to keep it looking new.

Tarnish

All my pieces are combined with sterling silver. Tarnishing is a process that happens naturally to metal over time, causing it to become duller and eventually blacken. It’s caused by exposure to water, oxygen and oils, but is easy enough to remove if you know how!

Ideally, you want to slow down how quickly your piece tarnishes in the first place though, so I recommend –

• Storing your jewellery in a sealed bag or box in a dry, dark, cool place. If it’s air-tight this is ideal.
• Removing jewellery when showering, swimming, sleeping, etc. Do not store it in the bathroom as it’s always damp!
• Removing whilst applying lotions, perfume, hairspray, etc.
• Cleaning metal parts of the jewellery (especially if they’re earrings) with a little soapy warm water after wearing to remove oils and dirt, then drying thoroughly before storing.

For larger silver pieces, I supply a silver polishing cloth which when rubbed gently over the item will bring back its sparkle (if your piece also contains resin, try to avoid buffing the resin surface with this cloth).

Here’s my favourite way to remove dirt and tarnish from jewellery, especially if they have awkward to get to parts:

Simply use a very soft toothbrush (one for young children is perfect), a little washing up liquid and warm (not hot) water and gently wash the piece. This will not damage the resin or stones, if there are any in the piece, but will rub away most, if not all the discolouration on your jewellery.

Here is a link to a handy website that has 13 different methods of removing tarnish from silver – I would say though be very cautious which methods you choose if the jewellery item contains resin too.