Happy Stories From our customers

We’ve stressed here many times how easy it is to clean your own jewelry using a variety of household products…but we have overlooked denture tablets apparently.

If your diamonds are starting to lose a little luster, you can toss them in a denture tablet bath to get them sparkling again.

Denture tablets have a lot of great uses when it comes to cleaning things, and diamond jewelry is no exception. Ashley Poskin at Apartment Therapy explains how to get your rings and bracelets looking like new, and all you need is a glass, a denture tablet, and some warm water. After your bling sits in there for about a half an hour, you can rinse and get to trouble spots with a toothbrush. Be sure to only do this with diamonds, though, and not emeralds, turquoise, lapis, or pearls. Check out the full tutorial at the link below.

Source: Lifehacker

I don’t know about you but I was a little surprised when Pantone chose marsala as their Color of the Year. It’s an earthy color, that’s for sure…but does it work in the fashion arena?

Luckily the people at 10x showed us some examples of marsala that may change our minds.

Here are a few gems that fall in the same family as the hue, and of course, 10 great jewels featuring those stones.

Garnet
Anna Sheffield’s “Bea Arrow” garnet studs

These new “FitzRoy the Cat” earring jackets featuring garnets are from designer Wendy Brandes.

Effy’s garnet and diamond pendant

Estenza’s drop earrings feature rose quartz at the bottom and a garnet on top

Goshwara’s garnet and orange chalcedony ring

Read more at 10x.

Did you know that tinsel used to be made of real silver? It’s true. It may not always look great on Christmas trees but it’s got an interesting history. Thanks to Motherboard for this:

Tinsel was popular in this form for centuries, with a slight break in manufacturing during World W​ar I because of disruptions to the manufacturing chain. But it didn’t last. Lead, as you ma​y recall, has toxic effec​ts on the human body, from our nervous systems to our gastrointestinal tracts.

These effects had been known for a long time, but the US didn’t start enforcing regulations on how much lead could be in commercial products until the 197​0s (lead-based paint was the first to be banned in 1971). In 1972 the US Food and Drug Administration an​nounced that tinsel made of lead could no longer be sold to consumers.

These days, the tinsel you know (and are kind of annoyed with) is made of a synthetic compound called polyvinylchloride, or PVC, with a shiny finish. It’s cheap and durable, used in products ranging from thick housi​ng pipes to reco​rds and fake leather clothes. Some less-flexible types of PVC are recyclable, but those handfuls of sparkly plastic that you throw willy-nilly at your tree are not. Much like the Christmas spirit, tinsel ne​ver dies; instead it sits at the bottom of a landfill with the rest of your holiday glee.