How to Clean Tarnished Silver Beads
Silver beads provide sparkle to necklaces and bracelets. This sparkle may dim, however, if the silver beads become tarnished. Silver beads can and will, like all silver items, develop tarnish under the right circumstances--especially if they are stored in damp conditions. Fortunately, tarnish is usually easy to remove with silver cleaning and polishing products. Cleaning tarnished silver beads should not be incredibly time consuming, although it depends just how tarnished the beads are.
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Instructions
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Put on rubber gloves, or gloves of any other material so tarnish does not transfer to your fingers.
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Place the tarnished beads in a small bowl (unless they are already strung on a bracelet or necklace. You can polish them without removing them from these). Place another bowl nearby--this is the bowl you'll use to place each bead after you've cleaned it.
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Place three to four beads on your silver polishing cloth. You can do several beads at a time, rather than one at a time--which could take a while.
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Fold the cloth over the beads and move the beads around in the cloth (holding the cloth in your hands and moving the beads around with your fingers). These cloths contain special polishing substances that will remove tarnish--you'll see dark spots appear on the cloth as tarnish is removed.
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Inspect the beads in the cloth. When they are polished and tarnish free, place them in the empty bowl and start working on a new set of beads. Continue until you've removed tarnish from all the beads.
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Tips & Warnings
You can buy silver polishing cloths at many jewelry stores online and offline, and at some department stores.
Instead of a polishing cloth, you can use a small amount of baking soda and water, as a paste on your fingers, to polish beads--note that baking soda is slightly abrasive, however, and may wear off a little silver each time. You may want to stick with a polishing cloth if the beads were expensive.
