Silver Hills Gems: Tips for storing and caring for your jewellery: Part 2

Our container arrived on Wednesday and just before it arrived it began pouring with rain. As the truck stopped it luckily stopped raining. Half the container was filled with the Storage solutions range. We allocated all this stock out to orders from the last SARCDA show.

We are excited to show you all the new items. Our gemstone beads will be well stocked again when we get to the boxes in which they are packed. I am also excited about all the findings. Quality findings at very good prices.

We now have 1813 clients and still growing. Recession? What recession?

What have we been up to this past week. 

1. I have listed small elephant carvings for the shop. The large box with the many elephants are an absolute steal. Elephants
2. 925 Silver Jewellery. I listed some rings, pendants and bracelets in sterling silver. Real high quality selected stuff. These will sell within a week or two in the shop.
3. Cherry quartz points and spheres. They are real WOW items. I have a lot of these now and they are so attractive. They are inexpensive. This is not a gemstone. They are made from molten glass. I know the name quartz should actually not be in there. It is also called cherry obsidian. This is also a misnomer, because obsidian is molten lava glass. Well this is what they call it everywhere and we just went with the flow. Cherry quartz points
4. Then we also listed some exclusive gemstones strings. The absolute best strings. The rose quartz is gel quality, like sweets.

I just want to remind our new clients that our system is set to only sell items that are in stock and will always halt on the shopping cart if you have placed an item in your cart that we do not have in stock. The sequence works like this. Once you have placed everything in your shopping cart I suggest that you press the cart contents button in the top bar on the right. This will take you to the shopping cart, here you can adjust your quantities to the desired quantities. Please have a careful look at each item and if we have less in stock you will see the following important notification behind certain items *we have less items in stock* You will not be able to go further in the checkout process if these items are not reduced in quantities or removed from the order if they are single items. Since you started putting together your shopping cart these items might have been ordered by someone else. If you have progressed to the shipping page or the delivery information page where you choose your postage option and you continue to the payment page and the shopping cart keeps opening up, you should check for the *we have less items in stock*notification again. Just adjust your quantities and proceed to the payment page.

Payment by credit card. Even though we do not have a secure page at the place where you enter your credit card detail it is 100% safe. ABSA bank checked our software and declared it safe enough to give us the credit card facilities. It sends us the card detail in an encrypted form that only we can see divided between the website and an email. This is then pieced together by us and only charged once we have taken out all your items.
We are very fast when we process orders. If you have placed your order before 12 it will go out the same day. I know some bead traders take days before they get back to you. Not at Silver Hills Gems. We are lighting fast. We should have everything in stock that is on the website. I have 2 dedicated staff that only handle orders. Orders that came in over a weekend only gets processed on Monday. If we have more than 10 orders that came in over the weekend it might delay your order to Tuesday. So I please ask to communicate with us if you can not pay your order the same day. My terms state that you have 48 hours to pay. This is 2 days after we have asked you to pay. We have had to cancel about 5 orders this month due to non payment. It saddens me because we spend a lot of time on the orders and I have to pay the staff for the time spend on the order. If you want to pay later please communicate to us clearly so that we can make arrangements.

If you place an order you will receive an email telling you that you have placed the order. The last page you will see when you checkout will be the congratulations page with an image of a wrapped parcel. If you do not see this page, we have not received the order. A further check is to see if the shopping cart is empty. Once you have logged in and you see that all your items are still in your shopping basket it will mean that we have not yet received your order. If you have succesfully checked out there will be nothing in your shopping cart left.

Tips for storing and caring for your jewellery

Be Gentle on Your Soft Stones
Be extra careful with stones that are considered soft.  The stones are normally porous and can crack and break more easily than stones that aren't porous.  Some examples of softer stones are turquoise, pearl (yes, not a stone, but in the gemstone family), opals and malachite.  Pearls, one of the softest beads you'll probably use, should be stored in a soft pouch to keep them from getting scratched.  Harder stones that you don't have to worry about so much include gemstones such as ruby, diamonds, onyx and jade. 

You should never soak softer stones in any kind of cleaning liquid or tumble them in a polisher.  Softer stones are fine to use for jewelry, but you generally don't want to throw them around too much because you can damage them.
If the findings of your softer stone beaded pieces, such as the metal clasps or wire sections, need to be cleaned, you have a few options.  First and easiest is to clean these areas with a soft polishing cloth.  Another option is to purchase an ionic cleaner.  These handy little machines are safe to use on many jewelry components and beaded items because they clean in just seconds.  They use a combination of electricity and cleaning solution.  You simply connect the metal area of the jewelry piece to a clip in the ionic machine, set this in the solution inside the machine, and push a button.  Seconds later you pull out your jewelry, rinse it briefly, and let it dry thoroughly.  You'll be amazed at how clean it is.

Shade Your Jewelry from the Sun
Just like your skin, the sun can damage your jewelry, especially gemstone jewelry.  Although your beaded amethyst necklace or citrine dangle earrings may look wonderful hanging in a display window so the sun streams down to reveal how gorgeous they are, you're signing a death warrant for your beads when you do this.  The sun will suck the color right out of your stones.  Some of this is because many stones are treated - color enhanced, you might say - through dyeing and heat treating.  So, by being exposed to ultraviolet light over a period of time, beads' color eventually fades.
Tone Down the Tarnish
All metals eventually tarnish at some point, but sterling silver especially seems to have this problem more so than other metals.  To help keep the tarnishing to a minimum, you can use a couple of tricks.

• When you aren't wearing your metal jewelry, store it in a tight container. This can be as simple as a plastic sandwich bag.  By keeping the metal away from oxygen, you slow down the oxidizing process.
  

• Check out products that combat tarnish.  You can store your silver jewelry in jewelry boxes and armoires that have chemically treated linings.  Tarnish strips are also a great product to store with your jewelry.  These strips are inexpensive, and you can drop one inside an airtight container with your jewelry. They work by eliminating the gases from sulfur.

Have a great week and do not hesitate to write to us with your questions.

Cornel, Gerdus and staff