How do I take care of my jewelry at home?

To prevent any scratch marks or buildup in your ring, there are a few ways you can take care of your jewelry at home. 

We recommend taking off your rings when you use lotion or hand sanitizers. If your ring is white gold, hand sanitizers will slowly remove the plating. It is also advisable that you remove your jewelry when exercising with machinery and weights. Doing so can potentially crack your rings, cause them to bend, or loose stones. Necklaces and bracelets can get caught and pulled, which can harm you, and your piece of jewelry.

How do I clean my jewelry at home?

We recommend purchasing an at-home jewelry ultrasound machine and following the manufacturer's instructions. Essentially this machine uses water and a mild cleaner in addition to gentle vibrations that will gently clean your jewelry. However, if your prongs are damaged, there is a possibility that this machine will loosen the stone and cause them to fall out.

You can also mix in a few drops of dish soap with warm water and drip a soft cloth into the solution. You can gently rub the tarnish from your jewelry. Just rinse with cool water and buff dry with a soft cloth. You can also substitute the mixture for a little bit of toothpaste.

How do I store my jewelry?

Traditionally, it is best to store jewelry in a fabric-lined box or a soft felt pouch to prevent jewelry from getting scratched. You can also put your favorite to-wear jewelry in a ceramic tray for easy access and store the rest of your jewelry in individual felt pouches to prevent necklaces from tangling and rings from scratching each other.

Sterling silver can oxidize so it's best to keep them in pouches. If your sterling silver jewelry is oxidized, a silver polishing cloth can be purchased. Just rub your ring with the polishing cloth and the oxidation will be removed.

What does A Gilded Leaf do during a checkup?

At A Gilded Leaf, we inspect the overall shape and state of your jewelry before we start to clean them to give your jewelry its original sparkle.

These are the steps we take when we receive your jewelry for cleaning:

1. Inspect the condition of the prongs

Through everyday wear, prongs that hold stones in place can potentially move out of place or break. Using magnification, our jeweler will identify and repair prongs that are showing signs of damage.

2. Check the overall shape

Jewelry can change shape over time, such as rings when meeting with hard surfaces can slowly conform to your finger’s shape which leads them to losing their original round shape. If this is the case, we will reshape your ring accordingly. This will be done the same for necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, which can be stretched by being tugged on.

3. Check the condition

There are many parts to your jewelry, such as for necklaces and bracelets, we have to take into account the chain, links and clasps. For earrings, we check the backs, posts, and hinges. And for rings, we check the overall shank. These parts are important to the function of your jewelry, and once weakened it's at a greater risk of breaking, which in turn can lead your jewelry from falling off your person.

4. Polish

The final step is sending your jewelry piece through our polishing process. This process removes any scratch marks, dirt, oils, and lotions bringing back the original shine and sparkle of your jewelry.