Cleaning vintage costume jewellery

First up I want to say I am not an expert but I just wanted to share my experience of cleaning vintage costume jewellery.

I'm not someone who owns much - if any! - very expensive vintage jewellery but I have a lot of very cute stuff, some of which I've had for a very long time. There is a lot of advise out there on how to clean silver or gold, but what if you have a piece of costume jewellery that is just grubby? Whether it be because it's been stored away forever, has had hairspray on it or perfume, or in fact you have it from a time when smoking in clubs was still going on, all these things can make jewellery grubby.

On Saturday I decided to clean a few items.

I have a really cute 50s charm bracelet with all manner of musical items on it a real trinket type of bracelet but cute! I really wish I'd taken a before picture of this, it was grey, really really grubby, I just never wear it as every time I look at it I just think it doesn't look nice.

I filled a bowl with washing up liquid and warm water, I popped the bracelet in, and used a very cheap soft toothbrush to give it a gentle scrub.

And here it is!

I know I took a lot of photos, sorry but I cannot tell you about the difference that cleaning has made! This bracelet was so grey I thought it was silver coloured and it's not it definitely has a gold tint, holy moly. If you have a piece of very grubby costume jewellery I can highly recommend this method!!

I got out a few of my lovely jangly 50s bracelets for a clean too. I rarely wear them these days but I really must, they are so lovely, I guess you go through phases I used to wear them all the time. They have come up so lovely and clean!

They are all super jangly, especially the top one, yes they are little bells!!

Then I got out a couple of my favourite brooches and a lovely vintage hair clip which was definitely grubby and had hairspray residue on it.

Again they all came up great with the washing up liquid and warm water solution. I had to be less aggressive with the toothbrush on the hair clip as it's pretty delicate but still gave it a very gentle going over.

I wear the brooches quite often but not so much the hair clip, I must wear that more, it's so beautiful and looks great with my red hair!!

Fixing Vintage Saturday

I don't know what it's like where you are today but here it's dull, raining and pretty goddamn miserable. I had no desire to go out and about today, and no real energy to do much but definitely wanted to do something!

So I set about fixing some things I've been meaning to for ages. I'll cover a couple here and some more in another blog post!

First up was a pair of gorgeous shoes that the buckle had come off. Because they're fabric shoes, I just sewed the buckle back on. I'm not sure how well it will hold but I sewed it pretty firmly. These are a pair of my most favourite shoes, they are just gorgeous. I'm lucky I have small feet so can often score big time when it comes to shoes! When I got these they were in their original box, I know, and what did I do, I didn't keep it, stupid!

Next up is a project I have been meaning to do for years, yes I'm ashamed! I have these beautiful shoes, green satin with rhinestone heels, however many of the rhinestones are now missing. The shoes are pretty worn and I'm thinking of dying the satin but I'm not quite sure how, I adore the green but some of it is too worn at the side of the shoes. Any ideas let me know!

I haven't quite finished these yet, I've done one heel, but I need to know it's going to work before I spend time doing the second one. I'll let you see the end project when it's finally finished!