Care for Resin Art Jewelry
All kinds of jewelry need some kind of upkeep.
Resin jewelries are pretty hard-wearing but to get the best out of your pieces and ensure their durability, please try to adhere to the following advice. For general up keeping, clean with mild dish soap and water with a damp microfiber, or silk cloth, which will polish your pieces nicely. Additionally, you can use plastic polish.
As your jewelry piece often contains metal components, regular metal jewelry caring applies to your resin jewelry too. Removing your jewelry when showering, swimming, etc. will help prevent and slow down metal tarnish, which happens to all metals over time.
Avoid the followings:
EXTREME HEAT
Epoxy resin is a type of plastic, which means its melting point is lower than the melting point of metal. While epoxy resin can be flamed when its first mixed together and is still in the curing/ hardening stage, once it has cured a flame can ruin the piece.
And while leaving your resin jewelry out in the sun isn’t the end of the world—and the minor heat won’t ruin the piece—UV rays are damaging to the natural color of flowers and leaves and some epoxy resins yellow with UV light. Some epoxy resins are specifically designed to not yellow with exposure to UV light, like the brand I use.
SHARP OBJECTS
Anything with a sharp edge can scratch the surface of resin. This could be possibly fixed with a simply extra coat applied to the top, but it’s easier to just avoid sharp objects in the first place. Abrasive cloths, sandpaper, and the like also fall into this category. Even small scratches, if there's enough, can create a cloudy look. As a result, try to avoid bumping and scratching or sleeping in your resin jewelry.
SUBMERGING IN LIQUIDS
When water doesn't have a negative effect on resin, but it does encourage tarnish on metal. Wearing any jewelry in the shower, pool, etc, will cause tarnishing to happen more quickly than usual. Basically, don't submerge in liquids, even if it is just water.
This may seem confusing when you read later in this post that sterling silver can be “cleaned” by submerging it in a concoction of boiling water, baking soda, vinegar, yadda yadda—I know. The thing is, this method is for removing tarnish that has already happened. And the “extreme heat” is good to avoid but boiling water is actually fine with epoxy resin in my experience.
Plated and even gold or silver filled jewelry have a limited number of layers before the base metal underneath is revealed--and once it is there is no way to brighten it unless it is re-plated by a professional jewelry (resin doesn't hold well in the process of this).
HARSH CHEMICALS
I know, there's chemicals everywhere. Even natural ones. But when I say harsh, I mean if particularly aggressive.
Chemicals such as acetone are known to eat plastic (and resin is a type of plastic). Alcohol, while useful at cleaning the metal parts of jewelry, can potentially damage the surface of epoxy resin, too. Perfume, which is often alcohol-based, is also a substance to avoid.
OILS
Oils seem pretty harmless right? Well, oils can ruin the surface of resin. It's not very noticeable and is fixable with an additional coat of resin, but when it comes to making your resin jewelry last as long as possible it's better not to leave oil on your jewelry.
It usually happens when it’s been sitting there a while. You might be thinking, “Oh, that’s fine, I’m not cooking while wearing my jewelry. I’m good.”
But the main culprit is actually the oils from human skin—especially for resin earrings which are often surrounded by hair and pick up oils from that as well. Necklaces, especially long ones that lay over your shirt all the time, are less effected.
So, a great way to take care of this is with mild dish soap. Dish soap is made to cut through grease. With some warm water it can remove oils. I do this before storing it (which I cover in more depth later on in this blog post). To remove a light amount of oil, use a soft non-abrasive cloth.