Archmaille Designs Blog

Okay, okay, so we got the light tarnish off of our jewelry with a little bit of dish soap and some rubbing under the faucet… but what about that piece that I haven’t worn in a few years that looks almost black!

It is true that the soap and water trick is great for day to day cleaning, it will help you to maintain a shine, just wash your jewelry before putting it on every day and it will look beautiful every time!  Now for the really tricky part the jewelry that isn’t worn that often… this jewelry tends to collect a lot of tarnish which can be tricky to remove. You really have three options at this point:

Wear the jewelry

Simply wearing your jewelry will rub off a lot of the tarnish.  As your jewelry rubs up against your skin and clothing the very thin layer of tarnish will naturally wear off.  It’s one of the reasons people say wearing both copper and silver jewelry is good for you.  Both are essential minerals that your body needs, both will be absorbed into your body as it rubs up against your skin and wears microscopic pieces off.

Polish like there is no tomorrow!

Okay, so we know putting on a brown, black, or yellow piece of silver jewelry is not that appealing.  In fact it’s not appealing at all!  So there is an alternative.  Get a good polishing cloth.  Most jewelry stores will sell you a polishing cloth that has embedded chemicals that help to clean your jewelry.  Alternatively if you want to go the ultra cheap route you can use a piece of flannel or other soft cloth to rub your jewelry clean with.

Use a jewelry cleaner

The third and sometimes most obvious alternative is to use a jewelry cleaner.  You can buy silver cleaning compounds that will do the job just beautifully!  They can be expensive though, much more than a jewelry cleaning cloth.  You can always make your own cleaner though ;-)  I’ll tell you more about that in our next segment.

Okay, so I get the question a lot about how to keep silver clean.  When you buy it the sterling silver, or plain silver jewelry looks beautiful!  Almost a white color, that just reflects light and shines.  But after a couple days of being worn… the shimmer lessens, and it looks like more of a dull gray than the pure white color it once was.

This comes from sulfur in the air believe it or not.  That’s why silver will often look a brown, or yellowish color.  Sulfur bonds with the silver atoms and makes it a different color because it’s now a different purity of silver on the outside, hidden behind a layer of sulfur.  Higher quality, or well made jewelry doesn’t do this as bad because the surface is smooth and has less surface area than jewelry that isn’t as dense and has a rough surface.

All silver still tarnishes though.  The easiest way to take care of it is simply using dish soap!  That’s right, you can bring back the luster of your sterling silver jewelry with just a little bit of dish soap, some warm water, and some vigerous rubbing.  Before you know it your jewelry will be back to it’s beautiful white color that silver starts out at!

Things are going good!  Not gonna give away any of my secrets but I’m actually coming up with a lot of good ideas for my postings.  Jewelry tips and tricks, cleaning and maintenance, supplies.  You name it and I’ve got an idea for it to come up on the ol’ blog here!  Just hope that I’ll be able to run like this for the next month… slightly worried since I’m running low on ideas for Archmaille.com, but then again I AM posting 6 posts a day on there so this should be a little bit easier I should think.

Anyways, back to writing, posting, and getting things ready for the day when this site is rollin’ in the fatties!  Woot!  haha, should be good.

Okay… so the challenge is to keep this blog updated every day, three times a day.  Three jewelry related posts a day though?  Is it really possible, or even feasible?  I mean, of course everything is possible, but how possible is it to have quality content with every post for a number of days… oh say even one month.  I’ve done it on my new blog at www.archmaille.com and trust me it’s been a pain, anywhere from six to TWELVE posts a day… I mean it’s paid off, but man… it’s going to be a stretch to say the least!

So that’s the goal for now, every day, three times a day, for one month.  That’s all I gotta do and this site will be popping!  or I sure as heck hope so.  I might not be selling jewelry like mad like I would want, but I should be making a little bit from advertising, and that is a huge deal as well!  If I can move up to making $300 a month, from my current $100 from advertising then things will be golden.  $300 a month nearly pays all of my basic bills… with a few left over.  The rest can be picked up by P3 stuff that I’ve been doing on CodySortore.com and Archmaille.com both of which are doing well!  Then when I launch ApplyMyWay I’d like to move on to making… oh say $1,000 a month from advertising, and $1,000 a month from P3.

Launch time for ApplyMyWay.com is VERY close!  We’re getting closer and closer to having the structure of the site up, and it won’t be long before the CSS is in order and then Beta testing can begin.

I’m looking at a three person team for Beta testing… myself heading it up, Jordan testing the ins and outs, and Rose making as many applications and quizes as possible to get things filled up.

As I may or may not have mentioned before the site is going in a little different direction than before.  I thought that it would be a log in system with sort of a social networking feel to it.  I took a poll and overwhelmingly it got voted to skip the log in system… so that’s how things are to go down.  No log in system more like PetitionOnline than Quizilla as it had originally been planned.