A few customers have asked me how I get the black patina finish on some of my jewellery, so as I have been doing some today I thought I would record how I did it to show you.
This is the chemical I use, it's called Liver of Sulphur and it smells like rotten eggs, so you need to do it somewhere well ventilated! It comes in hard lump form or liquid.
First I need to clean the silver with washing up liquid to get rid of any grease.
Then I put some drops of liver of sulphur into some hot water
I then drop the silver into the liver of sulphur using tweezers
I keep removing the silver to check the colour, because it's pure silver and not sterling which has a small amount of copper in it, it takes longer to go black, the first colour this piece has turned is an orangey colour.
Then blue
and finally black
This is the second piece I did, I didn't want the ivy leaf to change colour, so I painted it with clear nail varnish first.
This piece has gone a reddish blue
After this piece was finished I removed the nail varnish and polished it over so that the patina only remained in the veins, the other piece I have left black.
