Anyone who works in precious metal of any type will be very well aware of what sort of pain I mean.  In the last 18 months or so the price of metals - especially precious metals - has skyrocketed.  Every time you think it can’t get any more expensive … it just does.

Currently I’m paying about AU$0.97 a gram for sterling silver - that’s around double what I’ve paid for it throughout most of my career (US$0.89 at today’s exchange rate).

Even worse, today I purchased some 18k gold for the first time in a very long time.  I remember the days where I used to gasp over it being around AU$9 a gram.  Today I paid AU$35 (around US$32).  Ouch!

And here is what AU$187 worth of gold looks like!  Yep, it looks pretty piddly - especially when you consider that it’s only 0.3mm thick (0.1″ or around the same as 30 gauge wire).

Of course everyone who knows a thing or two about precious metal prices is wishing that they’d stocked up on kilograms of the stuff a few years back!  Although some people will tell you that those reading this post a year or so in the future will most likely wonder why we didn’t buy it in bulk right now - many people think that the prices are going to get much higher again than they are already.

Ouch.  OUCH!!

Anyway, I just felt the need to have a little whine about that!  And buyers of jewellery and other precious metal objects should feel free to whine too as of course ultimately they are now paying more too.

Yes, Christmas is almost upon us! And things are rather overwhelming at Simone Walsh Central (aka my place!). But I thought I’d take a quick break to fill you in on shipping deadlines and more re my handmade jewellery shop over the next couple of weeks.

Shipping

Orders outside of Australia: The earlier the shop, the more guarantee you have that items will arrive before Christmas. However, if you order by 14 December then you should be fine in terms of delivery. After that date, orders may well still arrive, but you will be pushing your luck!

Orders within Australia: You will be fine to order up until 20 December for delivery within Australia. However, from 17 December at the latest you should select Express Post to ensure your items arrive on time.

Find out more about shipping.

Gift certificates

If you do run out of time or you’re really not sure what to get someone, I now have gift certificates available in various amounts.

If you purchase a gift certificate I will email it to you as a PDF that you can print out in either colour or black and white to give to the recipient - so you can buy them as late as you wish.

Thanks to my lovely friend Dusty at 27 Things I’ve recently discovered that I can create a business page on Facebook for my handmade jewellery business.

So tonight I made one - you can find it right here.

If you’re a Facebook member you can sign up and be my fan!  Awwww.  And if you’re a Facebook member with your own business, I suggest you have a look into creating your own business page.

I recently read a forum post by a person who thought that tarnished jewellery was somehow defective and unwearable … which surprised me rather a lot as to me it seems obvious that silver will naturally tarnish and simply needs to be cleaned periodically.

I’d hope that most people realise at least that much, but reading this got me thinking about how jewellery makers perhaps assume too much knowledge on the part of their customers in terms of caring for their jewellery - especially when it comes to precious metals.

So here is some information about caring for your precious metal (especially sterling silver) jewellery which I hope readers will find helpful.

As an aside, I’ve recently added Sunshine brand polishing cloths to my shop which can be used to clean any precious metal. At the moment I’m also including one as a gift for those who spend over US$80 in my handmade jewelry shop.

tarnish

All precious metals can tarnish to even a minor degree. Platinum and pure gold are the most tarnish-resistant metals - the keyword here being ‘resistant’. Pure or fine silver is often said not to tarnish, but that isn’t true - it can and does tarnish, just a lot more slowly and in a less noticeable way than sterling silver.

Of all precious metals, sterling silver is the one which is most notorious for issues with tarnishing. This is because it has copper mixed in with the silver which has the benefit of making the metal harder and therefore more suitable for a wider variety of uses than very soft pure silver, but the downside is that copper tarnishes very easily.

There are some things that a jewellery maker can do in the right circumstances to help slow down or reduce the tarnishing of sterling silver items they make, such as repeated heating and chemical cleaning to reduce the amount of copper on the surface of the metal or coating pieces with a special wax. But chances are that even using these methods the metal will still need to be cleaned at some stage in the future.

What causes tarnishing? Basically, it’s caused by oxygen and moisture coming into contact with the metal - which gives a clue as to how to slow it down!

storing your jewelry

You can slow tarnish building up on the surface of your jewellery simply by wearing it frequently. The action of your skin or clothing moving against it and - in some cases - the metal moving against itself will help remove the tarnish on an ongoing basis.

Note that a small minority of people find that some metals will react to the chemicals released by their skin and they may find tarnishing or discolouration of metal will happen as a result of wearing it.

If you aren’t going to be wearing a piece for a while, then the best thing is to try to keep it isolated from too much fresh air and moisture. Ziplock plastic bags do wonders, especially if they’re as small as possible for the piece - and you can purchase anti-tarnish versions of these bags if you wish.

But for a more ‘elegant’ solution, simply using a pouch will help (again anti-tarnish versions are available) or even a jewellery box of some sort which closes well.

You can also purchase anti-tarnish strips to put inside pouches or jewellery boxes which can also help. Use of humidity absorbers near to where you are storing your jewellery can also make a difference if you live in a humid place.

cleaning your jewelry

polishing cloths

Specialist polishing cloths are generally the safest solution for cleaning precious metals. The cloths are soft and non-abrasive and are impregnated with chemicals which assist with cleaning tarnish from metal. You simply rub the cloth against the piece until it appears clean.

The cloths can be used until they are entirely blackened - it’s important to note that they cannot be washed without losing their effectiveness.

You can also gently use polishing cloths on metal which has recessed areas which have been blackened or otherwise coloured, such as this etched pendant. Using liquid chemicals on such jewellery pieces is not recommended.

The recessed areas of this etched sterling silver cuff have been chemically blackened to make the pattern stand out.

silver dip and other liquid cleaners

Using a quality silver dip is the fastest and easiest way to clean sterling silver as you only need to immerse the piece in the dip for a few seconds in order to remove tarnish. But it’s important to note that it’s not the best cleaning solution in all circumstances.

Most importantly, metals which have been patinated or ‘oxidized’ (chemically blackened) should not be cleaned with dip or other cleaning liquids as they can easily remove these elements of the design.

These chemicals should also not come into contact with textiles, for instance the silk thread used in many of the neckpieces I make.

Intricately cut out heart pendant suspended from a necklace made with natural silk thread.

It’s also important to thoroughly rinse any cleaning chemicals from the piece afterwards - these chemicals are generally toxic and you won’t want to be wearing them!

It’s a good idea to buy a respected brand name dip and it’s essential that you read any instructions that come with it. And the same goes for other types of liquids used to clean a variety of metals.

ultrasonic cleaners

These days there are some inexpensive ultrasonic cleaners available on the market and if you have detailed pieces of jewellery which can trap grime, getting an ultrasonic cleaner is a great idea. They will clean your jewellery (generally!) without damaging the surface. Note that these cleaners will not remove tarnish.

Ultrasonic cleaners work by creating miniscule bubbles which burst on the surface of anything submerged in them, which dislodges any loose particles.

Again, any instructions should be observed and it’s strongly suggested you don’t put pearls in particular into one of these cleaners.

Also, I would not recommend using an ultrasonic cleaner on a piece with coloured or blackened areas as part of the design - it may be safe to do so, but you may well damage or even remove the colouring.

baking soda paste or toothpaste

A traditional cleaning solution for silver items particularly has been to use a paste made with baking soda or toothpaste. This will clean your jewellery or other silver items, but it’s really not recommended. This is because these methods are abrasive and will damage the surface of the metal.

You may not necessarily notice this, particularly if the piece does not have a high shine, but each time you do it you are removing metal from the surface. Over time this will become more of an issue, so it’s particularly important not to use these cleaning methods if you’d like the piece to be handed down through your family.

soap and water

Soap and water won’t remove tarnish from the surface of metal, but jewellery can get grimey from ordinary wear, so giving it a clean occasionally is a good idea even if it isn’t tarnished. You may use a soft cloth or a soft plastic bristled brush (but note that this will mark the surface of highly polished pieces) to help clean the piece.

This is also a great way to clean most gemstones and glass beads. However, I recommend you research cleaning individual gemstone types if you are worried about damaging them - more porous gemstones such as turquoise and pearls should be treated with more care than more hard-wearing stones.

Be sure not to use cleansers with chlorine bleach in them as in the right circumstances they can leave unwanted black marks on your metal.

general care

The most important general care instruction I can give is to simply not think of your jewellery as being invincible! I’m sure it’s common sense to know that it can and will get damaged - perhaps irreversibly - if certain considerations are not taken.

In particular, don’t expect your jewellery to take an unreasonable amount of weight or force. If your jewellery is delicate, be careful not to store it with heavier items on top of it or in a place where it might get broken or bent against another surface. And of course don’t allow it to rub up against harder metals or other surfaces which will scratch it.

I pretty much have no life at the best of times. But at this time of year I really have no life at all. My existence pretty much entirely involves working, sleeping a bit, working some more, eating hurried meals, working again, etc..

Funnily enough, I realise that I could probably get more done more efficiently if I worked less. But because I work too much I have to keep working too much because I’m less efficient than I should be because I work too much. I’m sure that makes perfect sense!

Anyway, I thought I would share the above photograph with you after a few days of hard work to catch up on handmade jewelry stock for Christmas. I did actually get a bit more done than this, but some was put away already and other pieces had already been sent to customers.

And now … back to the grindstone!

As promised in my previous post, here are some ‘proper’ photographs and details of the new work I’ve created in the last week or so.

Much of the new work is now listed in my jewelry shop - and you can find more photographs in my Flickr.

This simple cutout flower pendant has been intricately cut out of sterling silver to leave the outline of a flower. The pendant is suspended on deep red natural silk with handmade sterling silver findings.

There is also a cutout flower pendant on black silk (and I can generally change the colour of the silk to something else if people prefer), along with a pair of cutout flower earrings.

 

To date I’ve not used a lot of gemstones in the work I sell online, however, I’m starting to play with some stones again and hope to have more in future.

Recently I fell in love with these elegant and not-too-flashy facetted quartz crystal briolettes. I’ve created a few simple designs which I hope have just the right balance between being subtle and ‘organic’, while also being sparkly and eye-catching.

The above necklace features three of the briolettes which have been placed on loops of sterling silver. The loops have been soldered closed, hammer beaten for texture and then oxidised a rich black. The loops are suspended from a simple sterling silver chain with handmade findings.

 

I’ve also created variations on this design using a black silk necklace and silver loops, along with quartz crystal earrings using both the oxidised and non-oxidised loops.

Cameos have fascinated me for a long time and for ages I’ve been thinking about creating my own interpretations of what is a very traditional theme in jewellery making. And here is my first design along these lines - a cameo pendant.

The traditional cameo profile of a woman’s head has been sawn out by hand from a piece of sterling silver which has been etched with my favourite detailed damask-style pattern. The silver has then been cut into a circle and domed to give it a rounded surface. The metal was then oxidised black and then sanded back leaving the raised areas of the patten a brushed but shiny silver.

The cameo pendant is suspended on natural black silk with handmade sterling silver findings.

The above etched leaves earrings are a variation of the leaves designs I created recently. This time the teardrop shaped and slightly domed panels with a dense leaf pattern etched onto the surface are suspended from curvaceous ear wires. The panels will swing eye-catchingly as the wearer moves.

I’ve also been creating some simple bead pieces for holiday shopping, including using some of my lovely stash of German glass vintage beads which were created by a company which closed down in the 1970s - the beads I’ve got date from the ’40s through the ’70s.

These stylised flower beads used for these vintage bead earrings have a ripple running around the edge of them and are a really lovely duck egg blue colour. To create these each earring I’ve placed three beads on handmade sterling silver pins which have then been wrapped to hold the bead in place. The three beads are then suspended from a handmade sterling silver ear wire.

To go with the earrings I’ve created this simple vintage flower bead pendant. Again the beads are placed on handmade pins and wrapped. They are then suspended on a hammer beaten loop of sterling silver, which is in turn suspended from a natural black silk necklace with handmade sterling silver findings.

And there are some other pieces besides … You can find these and other pieces, new and old, in my handmade jewellery shop - and soon on Mintd and already on Etsy.

Over the weekend I once again spent lots and lots of time at my work bench, a fair bit of which was pinning down and completing some new designs - but as usual I spent some time catching up on making existing pieces as well.

New and existing partially complete jewellery components.

… And today I’ve spent a chunk of time taking a whopping 370 photographs of completed new work.

I now need to sift through the images and delete those which are clearly no good. And then it’s a matter of opening them all up in Photoshop in batches, choosing the best variations for each piece and editing them ready for listing, before finally calculating pricing for the pieces and writing descriptions. Once all that is done, finally I can list them.

Which goes to show that creating new work is about a lot more than just creating new work!

Once I’ve edited the images I’ll post some of them here to give you a better sneak peak of what’s about to be listed in my jewellery shop.

I spent much of my weekend sawing out pieces of sterling silver, some of them into very intricate designs. While working I thought about the process of saw piercing and how much my own perception of it has changed over the past year or so.

Finished handmade jewelry and components fresh from the tumbler after a weekend of making.

I suspect it’s no accident that many courses teaching jewellery making from a metalworking perspective often have beginners start out by learning to saw shapes out of sheets of metal.

Of course many pieces of jewellery require saw piercing as the first step in making them, but I think more importantly saw piercing requires seemingly boundless amounts of patience, especially when starting out. And if there’s one thing that jewellery makers need to have in buckets it’s patience, along with a healthy dose of perseverance.

A day’s worth of broken saw blades. Thanks to Shoshona Snow for this gorgeous little dish!

Saw blades used in a jeweller’s saw frame are incredibly fine. Even if beginners are started out on what more experienced makers would regard as thick blades, they are still much finer than most people will ever have used before. Also, sawing out shapes for jewellery very often requires the maker to saw out intricate and fluid designs with complex curves and sudden changes of direction.

Left: A 5/0 saw blade against my hand to give an idea of thickness (or lack thereof!). You can see a close up showing the tiny teeth of the blade on Flickr. Right: Sterling silver scrap caught by the pouch in my bench after a few days of saw piercing and other jewelry making work.

The result is broken saw blades - lots and lots (and lots!) of broken saw blades.

Of course beginners will break blades a lot more frequently than more experienced jewellery makers, but it’s something that still happens often no matter how much experience you have. As a beginner you will either learn to live with this and keep going or you will decide this world of jewellery making isn’t for you and will find another outlet for your creativity. And realising this sooner rather than later is always a good thing!

Obviously as a beginner I stuck with it, despite the large mounds of broken saw blades and the frustration of seemingly endlessly replacing them as I was learning. Patience is definitely one of my personal strong (and weak!) points, so jewellery making and me seem like a good fit.

However, I still didn’t exactly love the technique of sawing metal. It was something I had to do as part of making many designs, but I was never exactly fond of this aspect of my work and would avoid doing it when I could.

Then I read one little line in a technical book which changed my perception of saw piercing. It was simply that a saw blade is effectively like a tiny sliver of the cross-section of a file and that to a degree you are kind of filing metal when you are sawing. This led me to go off on a tangent and suddenly see saw piercing as being a little bit like carving - and I love the process of carving! I find it easy to get into ‘the zone’ with this sort of work and for me it’s a very fluid, organic process, which I very much enjoy.

So this simple change in perception completely turned my thinking about saw piercing on its head. Pretty much immediately I started to work on much more intricate pieces where the technique is really the focus of the finished jewellery. And of course my skill in this area of work continues to improve as I push myself.

Sterling silver butterfly pendant.

One example of this in my current handmade jewellery range is the butterfly pendant I have been making in recent months - an extension of the butterfly wing pendant I have been making for a year or so now.

I now also often prefer to leave evidence of the saw piercing process in many of my pieces. For example, the marks from the saw blade can be seen in the pierced out sections of the butterfly wings. I like my work to look handmade and I love to leave traces of the process of making in my jewellery, and this is one example of doing so.

So as a result of one sentence in a book, for me saw piercing now really is a joy instead of a chore.

Except of course when I’m having one of those off days where I seem to break about ten times more saw blades than seems reasonable and even my patience is worn very thin! In which case it’s a good idea to simply do something else.