Archive for the ‘Silver necklaces’ Category

The Different Kinds of Silver Necklace Chains

Posted by admin - Monday, November 9th, 2009

When choosing a silver necklace to buy for yourself or for someone you care for, you will find that there are a number of different silver necklace chain types to choose from. Choosing the pendant for the necklace may be easier to do if you have what type of chain will go with it and here are some of the many different chain types that you might want to choose from when it comes to silver necklaces:

  • Adjustable Bead Chain Necklace – not necessarily chain-like but this is one of the silver necklace chains that women often want to wear due to the daintiness of its appearance. It has small bead-like shapes strung together in a chain form and this kind of a necklace often looks good with thin and fine pendants that are feminine looking or dainty as well.
  • Fine Box Chain Necklace – this type of a necklace chain is also fine and dainty with closely spaced links that make for a solid looking necklace that is thin and fine yet strong. You will often find these kinds of necklaces being worn by women who wear pendants with gems on them.
  • Rope Chain Necklace – this kind of a necklace can be seen in many different thicknesses and lengths, hence its versatility and its appropriateness for use by both men and women, depending on how thick the chain is. Usually, men prefer thicker chains when it comes to the rope chain necklace while women choose the finer and slimmer versions of this kind of a chain. These can be worn with or without pendants due to the simple yet elegant appeal of the twisted rope design.
  • Open Link Chain Necklace – this kind of a necklace is what you can easily see as one of the more common and more widely used chain types when it comes to silver necklaces. These can also be worn with or without pendants, usually depending on how thick the chain is or how fine the links are. Women usually prefer to get the finer linked necklaces in this design for them to be able to add a pendant to it while men opt for thicker links on silver necklaces that they can wear around their necks without having to have a pendant on it.
  • Flat Marina Chain Necklace – this is another popular chain that is often chosen by men for their silver necklaces due to the rather masculine appeal that it has. The links on these chains have a dividing line in the middle of the link, making the necklace stay flat on your neck and preventing it from twisting around unlike the open link variant.
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Make Your Own Silver Beaded Necklace

Posted by admin - Sunday, November 8th, 2009

When people talk about a silver necklace, they often envision a chain with a pendant around their necks. There are actually a number of many different kinds of necklaces that can be made with silver and one of these is a silver beaded necklace. You can actually make your own silver beaded necklace easily and with the use of your imagination and some well chosen materials for this project, you can come up with a silver necklace that is uniquely your own and one that you can actually give out as a gift to someone you care about for their special day.

What you will first need before you start this project is to find out where you can buy the materials you will need. The materials needed for this project include silver beads, silver jump rings and clasps, nylon string and a towel to place these on to help keep them from rolling off your work table. You can choose to use only silver beads for this lovely necklace you are planning or you can incorporate other types of beads like crystal beads, semi-precious beads and stones like pearls and turquoise beads. One of the things you can do too before you go out and buy your beads is to come up with drawings of the necklace you want to make and then you can come up with a list of materials you will need for such a necklace. An optional silver pendant can be added to this list if you want to include one in your design. Most of these beads can be found in a craft store near you and you can scope these beads out before you move forward your plan.

Once you go to the craft store to check out the beads that you might want to include in your silver bead necklace project, you might want to put together certain beads with different shapes and textures that you feel will look good with each other. Try to put these together side by side to see if they do look good beside each other or if there should be other components in between these beads to make the necklace look more stunning. Do not be afraid to incorporate certain shapes like ovals, squares, diamonds and circles in the mix. Do not be afraid as well to add dark oxidized beads to the mixture to give your necklace a bit of personality and depth.

Purchase enough beads to make a couple of necklaces for you to be able to mix and match when you need to or to even create a matching bracelet if you want to. Try stringing your necklace together and see how it would look around a person’s neck by holding it against your own neck and checking out the effect in the mirror. Do not attach the clasp on your silver necklace until you are certain that you have the right length and the right composition you want for your necklace. Once you have made your first silver bead necklace and you find out how easy it is to do, you can now make bracelets and even earrings to go with this and you can either wear these yourself or give it away as a gift set.

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How to Make an Antique Looking Silver Necklace with Oxidation

Posted by admin - Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Silver necklaces are nice items to have as accessories and their shimmer and shine make them really wonderful looking things to wear around one’s neck. There are times however when the shimmer of silver can be enhanced by the darkness of tarnish and this is what makes antique silver accessories popular among a lot of people. This popularity of antique silver jewelry has actually become so widespread that some silver jewelry manufacturers have come up with silver necklaces, bracelets, rings and even earrings that are made in the fashion of antique accessories and oxidized to make them look old.

If you have certain silver jewelry that have that antique appeal but is shiny and shimmery in its newness, like that silver necklace with beads that you just bought or that intricately handcrafted silver armband that you recently received on your birthday, you can actually oxidize these to make them get that antique look you want. Here is what you will need to do to get your silver necklace to look like time has taken its toll on it. Before you oxidize and age your silver necklace though, a word of precaution since you will be using certain substances that may be somewhat hazardous to you and your health. You will need to wear protective rubber gloves when doing this project and you will need to wear a surgical face mask to help keep yourself from inhaling any of the liver of sulfur dust you may produce with this project.

You will need to bring together supplies and materials which include a pea sized piece of liver of sulfur, plastic tweezers, a plastic spoon, a heat-resistant glass bowl, half a cup of hot water, fine steel wool, paper towels, mild dish soap, rubber gloves and your silver necklace. You will need to put the hot water in your glass bowl and then you will add your pea sized liver of sulfur to this water. Mix with the use of your plastic spoon to dissolve. Be careful not to handle this mixture with your bare hands or to even inhale the fumes that it produces. To ensure safety and to help avoid any possibility of your inhaling these fumes even with your surgical mask on, you should work on this outdoors for better air circulation.

After you have dissolved your liver of sulfur in the water and the water has turned yellow, you will then need to dip your silver necklace in this mixture. Slowly submerge your silver necklace in this yellow liquid with the use of your plastic tweezers. Remove the necklace from the sulfur bath after three seconds and rinse with clean water. Check to see if you got the desired antique look you want with this process. If you want your necklace to turn darker, dip it again in the sulfur and water mixture for another three seconds and repeat the rinsing method. Place on paper towels and then you can now use your steel wool to scrub off parts of the necklace where you want the silver to show. Wash off your necklace after this process and dry off with paper towels and you have a lovely antique looking necklace.

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Storing Your Silver Necklace and Silver Jewelry Properly

Posted by admin - Friday, November 6th, 2009

Having a silver necklace, or even a few of them, is indeed a joy and to help keep these pieces of jewelry clean and free of dirt, grime and tarnish, you need to be able to store them properly. Storing your silver jewelry does not necessarily require that you have an ornate or expensive jewelry box to put them in, although it would be a good thing to have a multi-compartment jewelry case for all your different kinds of jewelry. When you only have a single box for putting all your accessories in, here are a few tips you may want to heed when storing your silver necklace and other jewelry in it.

  • Never mix your jewelry in one big jewelry box or container as this will not only cause your necklaces to tangle and possibly break, this will also cause problems with scratching. What you need to do when you have a jewelry case that is not compartmentalized is to get small cardboard boxes, like the ones you see pins and medals being put it, from a craft store near you and place each piece of jewelry you have in each one of these little boxes. Write on the cover of these boxes what accessory is in each one for you to easily locate which accessory you will need without having to dig through all the boxes one by one.
  • Another thing you can do if you have a single jewelry box without compartments for all your jewelry and your silver necklace collection is to create small jewelry bags for them. While some people opt to use those lovely red felt jewelry bags for storing each piece of jewelry, you actually do not need to do this if you can’t find these little bags. You can actually use small zip-lock bags for keeping your jewelry in and separate from each other in your jewelry box. To help keep them from tarnishing while in these little plastic bags, you should put a small strip of anti-tarnish paper in each bag with each piece of silver jewelry you have.
  • When you have a box that is made of wood for your jewelry, even if it is divided into compartments for safe storage of your jewelry without their knotting up with each other and scratching against one another, you should not place your silver necklace and other silver jewelry on the bare wood of this box since wood has certain acids that can cause your silver jewelry to tarnish or discolor. When you have a jewelry box like this, make sure that you put your silver jewelry in individual zip-lock bags to protect them from this acid or line the bottom of each compartment of this box with felt. Simply buy a sheet of felt paper from a craft store near you, measure out each compartment and cut out the lining for each one from the felt paper that you have. Glue this on the inside of your jewelry box compartments with the use of PVC glue or even with hot glue.
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How to Clean Your Silver Necklace

Posted by admin - Thursday, November 5th, 2009

One of the many kinds of accessories that people love to have around their necks is a silver necklace and while a silver necklace is easy enough to wear, keeping it clean and shiny takes a bit of doing. There are many ways you can clean your silver necklace and these ways come in the form of professional formulations that you can buy from jewelry stores or in home-made remedies that can work to remove tarnish and dirt from your necklace. Here are some tips on how you should clean your necklace to help it keep its luster and shine:

  • When you buy your silver necklace, make sure to get yourself a good gold and silver cleaner. There are paste cleaners, spray cleaners and dip cleaners you can choose from. Each one can effectively remove dirt and tarnish that may buildup on your necklace over time. Read the instructions for use on these products before using them and follow these instructions when you clean your silver necklace to help you keep your necklace clean and in tip-top condition.
  • When cleaning with the use of a cleaning paste, use a soft bristled baby toothbrush to apply the paste on your necklace if you need to brush out some hard to reach tarnish which may be seen sitting in cracks and crevices of the necklace’s chain. If you can remove the pendant from the chain, do so to clean it better as well. When using a soft baby toothbrush to brush out the tarnish and dirt from your necklace, be sure to use a one-direction stroke and not a circular one. One way to do this is to lay down your necklace in a straight line on a clean piece of cotton cloth and run the toothbrush down its length. Wipe off the cleaning paste with the cotton cloth the first side after brushing it, turn over and repeat the process on the other side.
  • If you run out of cleaning paste, cleaning spray or cleaning dip for your silver necklace and it is too late to go out and buy one, you can actually get your silver necklace to sparkle and become clean again in an hour if you have baking soda in your house. Simply get a glass baking dish or pie dish and line this with aluminum or tin foil, making sure that the shiny side is facing you. You will then need to put your necklace on the foil in the dish and cover it entirely with hot water. If you want, you can put all your other silver accessories in this cleaning bath too to clean them up in one sitting. Sprinkle baking powder into the water and see the bubbly reaction it has on your jewelry and on the water. Leave this sitting for an hour to help it clean the cracks and crevices of your silver jewelry. After an hour, remove your necklace and other silver jewelry from this bath and wipe them off slowly with either an old cotton t-shirt or an old cotton towel.
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