This post is for those of you who have bought my work (THANK YOU!), or maybe you have been considering purchasing a piece for your collection. We have all been there—see amazing jewelry, fall in love with amazing jewelry, wear amazing jewelry….until… maybe it doesn’t look so amazing anymore. Perhaps its lost some of its initial shine and brilliance, or maybe looks a little dirty. I’m going to share here with you some tips on how to care for your Anthropoloca jewelry and many of these tips can apply to other pieces you may have as well!

Even though I painstakingly hand cut, shine, file, hammer and sand, resand, sand resand then polish and repolish (again and again!!) each and every metal component of my work, it is inevitable they will eventually take on a tarnish. Tarnishing is a natural process and chemical reaction that occurs between a metal and non-metal compound.

When we wear our jewelry, it interacts with the air around us, as well as oil, sweat, lotions, deodorants and perfumes which can lead to oxidation. This causes our once brilliant silver, gold, cooper or brass jewelry to eventually dull and take on a darker tone. Though I am personally a fan of the way copper looks after it takes on a natural patina its a good idea to occasionally clean your jewelry and remove the layer of oxidation which will leave it shiny and refreshed! You will feel like you have a new piece of jewelry again!

(DISCLAIMER:These tips are for my brass and copper components, and while a polish cloth is appropriate for gold and silver, please proceed with caution if using the steel wool.)

Here I use two of my own personal creations to show how just a little bit of elbow grease can go a loooong way in updating your jewelry’s shine!

I decided to shine up two pieces I love very much—one is part of a necklace set I made for myself and my 6 year old Zoe. Her’s says “I love you” and as you can see mine says “to the moon and back.”I used copper for these and I haven’t cleaned it in several months, so its taken on a nice, muted dark color. The other is a pair of my best-selling “Half Moon” earrings, which I wear as my favorite go-to. These are brass, and you can see they are somewhat dull, and even have a little spotting due to contact with who knows what?!

One of my favorite things to use to get a quick and brilliant shine and use while I’m in the process of finishing my metalwork, is #0000 stainless steel wool. Though this will leave you with dirty fingers it will leave your metal shiny and bright! I prefer to use this to get off the initial tarnish as it saves my polish cloth to remove the smaller grains and finish with shine. Of course if you don’ have steel wool, a typical jewelry polish cloth works just fine. It will just take a little more rubbing and use your cloth up more quickly. I give a quick scrub with the stainless then follow up with a nice shine with the cloth. It literally took less than 5 minutes, but you can see the difference it makes! The metal’s natural shine starts to come out and you can much better see the lettering, hammering and texture of each piece.

Hope you find this helpful, and if you have some jewelry pieces that seems a little lackluster this might motivate you to clean them up and make them new again! do you have any cleaning tips you use for your jewelry? Feel free to comment below!