Very Pinteresting: Homemade Jewelry Cleaner Recipe vs Wright’s Silver Cream

I have these little silver vases that I gave to all my bridesmaids at my wedding. I bought a set for myself while I was at it. I love these cute vases in different shapes, but over the years they are on the annoying and neverending tarnished silver cycle. I was good about cleaning them back in my newlywed days, along with all the other silver pieces we received for our wedding.

Now?

BAHAHAHA. Not so much.

Then I saw an intriguing pin for a jewelry cleaner come across my pinterest feed a few weeks back. When I clicked through the link nearly every single comment was positive and raving about it. So, of course I had to try it immediately! I was really hoping that I had found a miracle recipe here, folks! This would save me like, MINUTES of time every year. I was getting really excited about those minutes. The directions were very simple. 1 cup hot water, a piece of aluminum foil, baking soda and salt. Dishwashing liquid optional. When I mixed up my concoction and tossed my rings in the solution for the prescribed 10 minutes they did come out a little bit cleaner, but I wasn’t blown away by the results. I decided to put it to the real test and try out some of my tarnished silver.

This picture shows the progression of the homemade solution versus polishing the vases using Wright’s silver cream.

1. Vase 1 is the ‘before’ image for the group. They all looked like this before the experiment began. Shameful, I know.
2. Vase 2 was left to soak the BOTTOM HALF ONLY in the Homemade Jewelry Cleaner (HJC) for 10 minutes.
3. Vase 3 was cleaned with Wright’s Silver Cream 100% and didn’t touch the HJC
4. Vase 4 was soaked completely in the HJC for 10 minutes and rinsed with clean water.
5. Vase 5 was soaked completely in the HJC for 10 minutes and then scrubbed with Wright’s Silver Cream.

I think you can see a clear winner here. The one that I polished by hand with the Silver Cream is gleaming and beautiful.

The before vase is terrible, but the half/ half one that soaked in the solution isn’t much better:

The ones that soaked in the HJC solution 100% are not good at all, even after a light scrub with the silver polish.

When we go back and look at the finished product (after they have ALL been scrubbed really well with Wright’s silver cream) I am really disappointed to see that the one that soaked in the HJC completely (Vase 4) now has this brassy gold cast to it that refuses to come off, no matter how much elbow grease I put into it. See it on the left here?

The chemical reaction must have tarnished it for good. UGH! So much for experimenting and trying to find an easier way. You can see it better here:

To add injury to insult, the chemical reaction that occurred when I dipped the silver into the solution probably killed a few of my brain cells. It smelled TERRIBLE, and it left me with a dull headache for the rest of the evening. Wright’s has never done that to me. Elbow ache, maybe, but not headache. I’m scared to think what kind of toxic fumes I might have subjected my kid to that night.

Final test result: Go for Wright’s, put some effort into it and skip the shortcuts. I guess some things are easier done the old fashioned way. I knew it was too good to be true.

If you wanna buy some Wright’s Silver Cream for yourself, click here!

Have you had any Pinterest ideas go wrong lately?

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