How to Clean Animal Jewelry
Animal jewelry can be anything from a simple rhinestone
studded-collar to very expensive diamond-studded collars and
leashes, gold ankle bracelets, or even a diamond tiara for
your poodle. It can also be jewelry for you that depicts
your darling pet. Animal jewelry makes a fashion statement
and tells everyone that your pet is pampered and you treat
it like royalty. Basically, animal jewelry is just plain
fun.
But you say that your animal jewelry just isn't sparkling
like it should? How should you clean your pet's jewelry?
Residue and oils from your dog's skin and fur often gets
trapped and caked into and around the individual jewels and
onto the precious metals. Plain water may not seem to get it
as clean as it was when you bought the jewelry.
How do you clean animal jewelry? In fact cleaning any type
of jewelry is about the same. The one major condition for
your pet's jewelry is that you want the cleaner to be as
natural as possible so that it doesn't harm your pet in any
way.
There are many safe, natural and effective ways to clean
jewelry. They will give the animal's jewelry back the luster
it had when you bought the jewelry.
But before you begin to clean your animals' jewelry you will
want to first check and see if there are any loose catches,
lost prongs, or anything else that might fall off during
cleaning. If you see a problem then it would be prudent to
either remove whatever is falling off before you clean the
jewelry or to repair the jewelry before you clean it.
Now for the cleaning:
First you must determine what the jewelry is made of. Is it
Gold, Silver, Platinum, Sterling Silver, or Copper? Are the
gems rhinestone, diamond, topaz, or pearl? Is the jewelry
attached to leather or other easily-damaged material?
Each type of metal and gem associated with the jewelry
requires its own special care and instructions for cleaning
it properly. For example, you can damage the softer metals
by using an ordinary brush to clean them. And you can
irreparable scratch a pearl by using the self same brush.
Leather should not be soaked or steamed, but oiled and
polished. So you need to research the gems, metals and other
materials and follow the guidelines for cleaning that gem
and metal.
Some quick guidelines: Soft gems and metals should probably
be simply wiped with mild soap, warm water and a soft cloth,
then gently dried. The same holds true for leather, with the
addition of a little leather oil at the end. Gold and hard
gemstones like diamonds, rubies and emeralds can be steamed
in a vegetable steamer for twenty minutes or so, then dried
with a soft cloth and buffed with a buffing cloth.
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