Shiny Accessories for Spring: A Sponsored Post

Spring. The season of new beginnings. Foliage in bloom, pastel colors, longer days – I cannot associate all that joy with spring cleaning.

But I jumped at the opportunity to tie in the season with Jelmar’s silver cleaning product, since I wanted to resuscitate some old jewelry to wear with my happy colors.

First up: a silver chain, a decorative silver perfume funnel and some random keepsakes. I poured a little Tarn-X into a silver ashtray, dropped the chain and funnel in and watched the metals change color. It was pretty impressive so I searched the kitchen for other things to try this on. Four fish forks I forgot I owned came pretty clean, although the tines would look better if I had briefly soaked them too. A discolored silver tray brightened as soon as I poured some product into it.

Next experiment: a costume necklace that I’ve had for so long, I’m still not sure what color the chain was supposed to be. Well, now it’s silver. I wore it one day to make sure my skin didn’t have a reaction to the Tarn-X and I can happily report that my neck skin is fine. And the necklace has little pink stones that will look great with my spring things.

It’s worth noting that this stuff smells, so open the window and run a fan while you’re using it. Don’t soak anything for more than a couple of minutes. The company stresses that you should wear cleaning gloves, which I would have done anyway. Also, the bottle became slippery, making it tougher to maneuver with the gloves on. You certainly don’t want to spill this on the floor. Read the instructions before even slipping on those gloves.

Also worth noting is that this product will remove ALL tarnish. I understand that some “discoloration” is actually part of the design. That’s not my style so I was happy to see everything turn a bright, almost white, type of silver. In my opinion, a starkly-shiny piece is more modern than one with patina, but that is personal preference.

I was accustomed to polishing silver by rubbing a cleaning paste into an item repeatedly until it became shiny, a time-consuming task that I stopped doing a long time ago. (Hence all that tarnish!)

Jelmar also sells silver polish but I didn’t see a need for that.   Everything looked fine with just the cleaner.

I like shiny things; that’s even the name of my Pinterest jewelry appreciation board. My pins don’t even have to be precious stones and metals, just pretty. So I was glad to give this product a try.

Mission accomplished. Anything that will touch food was washed with dish soap. Then came play time, just me, my camera, the newly-brightened tray and fish forks…and snacks. Swedish Fish and goldfish crackers on a tray that I can now use again.