As a proud Pandora charm bracelet owner I take great care in choosing the charms that go on my bracelet every day and get to show them to quite a few people whose eye it catches. How embarrassing it would be to have bits of dirt, skin cream and makeup on my charm! Having owned Pandora bracelets for quite a while I’ve devised a fairly good casual maintenance plan to go along with the twice-yearly cleaning as recommended by Pandora themselves here. There are some serious do’s and don’ts that I’ve come to learn over the years, and sometimes the hard way, so even though I might not be the foremost authority on precious metal cleansing I’ve got a few tips that might make your life easier and even save the lives of your precious charms.
Prevention Over Cure
Well the best way to have a clean bracelet is quite obvious: don’t get it dirty! If you’re going to encounter some mud, dirt or grime that put that bracelet away somewhere safe. It might seem totally obvious, but the odd scrape against our charms can cause damage that’s totally irreparable.
The over thing is to store you bracelet in an appropriate the place. Gold generally keeps much better than silver as it’s not as reactive a metal, so most people are concerned with silver tarnishing. Tarnishing happens when silver reacts with various chemicals and oxygen in the air. The metal will look different from its colour as the outmost layer of jewellery undergoes a chemical reaction. While this process might help to protect the metal below the outer layer you want to let the silvers shine so it’s best to watch out and clean away any tarnish that appears.
Cleaning Silver Tarnish
First of all check that the tarnish on your silver isn’t there on purpose! Pandora has many silver charms where the silver is oxidised to create a contrast between the light and dark tones. Pandora uses processes to oxidise their silver charms very precisely, but even your cloths can ruin the desired effect of the darker layer. To clean you can shop around for any kind of paste or solution that you can rub into the tarnish to take it off or a special silver polishing cloth which will have some solution inside to help take off the darkness. Follow the instructions of the cleaner, but generally when cleaning charms and bracelets you’ll want to give a simple rub down in hot water and a soft cloth to remove dirt and oils.
Storing Your Bracelet
As part of care, storing your bracelet is very important. Basically, to avoid tarnishing your bracelet and charm you’ll want a space that it free of air flow. Pandora does have special soft cloth bags to store your charms in (the box you get with the bracelet isn’t actually the best for charm and bracelet storage). Even something as simple as a zip lock plastic baggy can keep out air is better for your charms than a padded and fancy box, but of course you can keep your plastic bag of charms in there if you want to look a little stylish!
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