How to clean jewelry with soap

Making your jewelry look great with a mild, eco-friendly soap may sound unusual, but a gentle “green” dish soap can be a simple, effective way to clean tarnished silver, pearls, and diamonds. You can even make your own eco-friendly soap at home using natural ingredients, such as one cup of castile soap mixed with one tablespoon of lemon juice. To clean silver with either a matte or shiny finish, add a little dish soap to a damp, soft cloth and gently rub the piece. Rinse thoroughly and dry it well. For precious stones, gently clean with an old toothbrush dipped in soapy water. Choose a brush with soft bristles to help prevent scratches.
This “onda su mare argenteo” earrings for sale in our online shop, for instance, were cleaned with mild soap.

The one-of-a-kind, handmade “onda su mare argenteo” earrings look great after being cleaned with an eco-friendly soap made in the kitchen!

Homemade ketchup for cleaning jewelry

Got ketchup? Perfect!
Now, you can use it to clean your favorite jewelry. Ketchup polishes well brass and even bronze jewelry that has darkened over time. How to use it? Add a small spoon of ketchup on a clean cloth. Rub the piece until it shines, then rinse well and dry. This is another eco-friendly way to clean your jewels with something that you already have at home.

Continue to follow this blog for other sustainable techniques to keep your jewelry pieces like new!

The handmade and one of a kind “Riccio di mare” earrings can be easily cleaned with ketchup! Need a pair? check our online shop here

Baking soda: the perfect jewelry cleaner

I care deeply about the environment, so when I started making metal jewelry I was careful to maintain ethical and environmentally-friendly practices.

Of course, using eco-friendly techniques for cleaning my pieces – and those of my friends and clients - became a natural choice and I learned different ways to polish and keep handmade jewelry beautiful and flawless without harming the environment.

For cleaning jewelry, baking soda is environmentally-friendly, low-cost and at the top of my list. One can do pretty much anything with it, including making jewelry look like new! This powder is slightly abrasive so it needs to be used with caution and only on the right jewelry. It works well with metals like silver and gold with a matte finish. Gently polish the piece rubbing it with a warm, damp cloth that has been sprinkled with baking soda; rinse well and dry the jewelry, et voila’…the tarnished piece will come back to life.

these handmade Maddalena Bearzi jewelry pieces with a matte finish can be easily cleaned with baking soda. Model and actress Frances Pearson wears ba-lena necklace in silver and gold, a pair of marea earrings in bronze and a relitto ring. The silk shirt is Lotte.99.