Archmaille Designs Blog

Alright, do I have you all waiting on my update yet?  I know, it’s been almost a whole day since I promised the secret of making your own jewelry cleaner, but I wanted to make sure that you all were paying attention!

Now, here’s what I do.  I could always spend TONS of money on expensive jewelry cleaners from my magazines, not only the creams they sell for sterling silver jewelry cleaners in stores, I’m talking industrial strength eat your face off kind of jewelry cleaners!  (So maybe not quite eat your face off, but you get the point) First off most of that is overkill, secondly a lot of those industrial cleaners can eat away at glued points of your jewelry, and even I use a few dabs of glue here and there.  They’re also expensive!  So let’s get to what it takes to make your own jewelry cleaner:

Supplies

• a small bucket or tupperware container (I use the disposable ones)
• ammonia
• dish soap
• rubbing alcohol (90% pure is best but whatever works)
• distilled water

Process

It’s very simple, take your tupperware container, pour in about 1/3 of it with ammonia.  Now take your dish soap, about 4 tablespoons of it, mix that in with your ammonia (try not to splash around, but the ammonia also works good for stripping the soap off of your spoon).  Now mix in another 1/3 with rubbing alcohol.  Finally top it off with distilled water.  Stir things up a bit (or if you used a lidded item you can put the lid on and shake) and you’re good to go!

Alternatively you can skip the distilled water all together just mix half and half ammonia and rubbing alcohol for maximum strength.

You’ll need to replace the rubbing alcohol from time to time.  It evaporates quickly, that’s why we use it after your jewelry has soaked for a little while when you remove it, it will dry quickly because of the rubbing alcohol.