How to Clean Your Copper Jewelry in a Minute

How to Clean Copper Jewelry in 60 Seconds

http://www.handmadeology.com/how-to-clean-copper-jewelry-in-60-seconds

Personalised Copper Cuff by Elfen Hardd

Woah! That’s quite a claim, right? For anyone who’s sat with a yucky, tarnished piece of copper jewellery and wondered how on earth they’re meant to clean it, this post is for you. I promise you can get fantastic results for your copper jewellery, cuff bracelets or otherwise, in a minute. This is a repost of one of my older blog posts: Cleaning Copper The Easy Way.

Why You Need to Clean Copper

Copper will naturally tarnish over time, due to its exposure to the air and the sweat on your skin. Because of this, some copper jewellery is sold with a coating to prevent tarnishing. Now, that can be pretty handy, but I’ve never done it at Elfen Hardd (yet) as it can have a few drawbacks:

1. Depending on the kind of material used to permanently coat the metal, it can sometimes become damaged over time, flaking away and looking pretty darned disgusting.
2. If someone is buying a copper cuff for its supposed benefits, having a coating on the metal will presumably lessen the effect of wearing it.
3. Some permanent varnishes have a slight cloudiness to them, which can worsen with age. This can make your once beautiful jewellery look dull and uninteresting.

I’m still playing with possibilities for coatings for some of my jewellery, but I don’t think I’ll ever coat the cuffs. So in the meantime we need a nice easy way to get them clean! Read on for awesomeness!

The Power of Lemons!

Using Lemon Juice and Salt, you can literally sit back and watch the copper clean itself in front of you. I’ve only used a small amount in the pictures below, so that I could show you a before & after on the same cuff. You can and should use enough lemon juice to cover the surface of the cuff, and about a tablespoon of salt. It’s not an exact science, I even left the seeds in!

Yuck! A tarnished Copper Cuff ready for dipping

I dipped the cuff half-in, half-out at first, but that was just to get the awesome comparison below. Leave it in the mixture of lemon juice & salt for about 30-60 seconds…

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I challenge you to not make an ‘oooh’ sound. Just me? Fine, I’m easily pleased. :p

A beautiful, shiny copper cuff, all done. All you have to do now is rinse & dry with a soft cotton towel or paper towels. Polish it with some beeswax or renaissance wax if you want to protect it for a little longer.