HERE ARE A FEW TIPS I FOUND WHILE CRUISING THE INTERNET

Cleaning Beads Sandra Paluzzi The Bead Peddler® B.J. Mack supplied the initial tip for this column. She washes her beads in an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner with very mild jewelry cleaner containing no ammonia and no alcohol. This is the jewelry cleaner that is safe for use with pearls. She starts drying them by first blotting them between layers of paper towels. After she removes all the excess moisture, she dries the hole with a hair dryer. The hair drier is placed on a low setting and is held a good foot away from the beads. She uses this technique on all beads, particularly Indian beads, except for seed beads. The beads come out clean, bright and sparkly. ******************** I place my beads into a colander that is then placed inside a bowl. I wash them with Woolite® , rinse them with clear water, blot them with paper towels and let them air dry. Some people just use warm water. ******************** Still others put beads inside panty hose and run them through the dish washer. However, not all beads can be placed in the dish washer. For example, inside color furnace wound beads should not be run through the dish washer - the cores can separate. ******************** Alice Walker uses a denture cleaner tablet such as Efferdent or Polident to clean her beads. She says that the beads are sparkling by the time the tablet is through fizzing. She then just rinses them with clear water and lays them on a terry cloth towel to dry overnight. Alice does caution not to use this method on glass pearls with a coating. ******************** Bev uses two parts water to one part lemon juice to wash or clean jewelry. She just swishes them around in the liquid....to clean sterling silver, she adds a little baking soda to the liquid, making it a kind of pasty consistency and then uses that to clean off the s.s. ********************