The Polishing Project

Several years ago while perusing Pinterest, I found this image of silver trays and bowls being displayed. I immediately fell in love and started my search for silver trays (silver plated really) so could do my own wall display. Needless to say I don’t have nearly enough trays but I have a start to my own wall display. I even have a tray kind of like the one in the middle of the picture that I picked up at a thrift store for a $1.00, what a bargain.

Image Courtesy of Dishfunctional Designs 

The down side to silver or silver plated anything is the black patina that it seems to accumulate, now I love a good patina I just don’t like the black stuff I feel like it is dirty.
So with the help of a few other vintage shop owners I was pointed towards using a chrome cleaner as it will not scratch the silver yet is effective in polishing the silver. After a quick trip to Napa Auto Store, I was pointed in the direction of Nevr-Dull. I started off polishing some silverware that was in desperate need of a good polishing to see how well it worked and if the money was well spent. Obviously it was. A can of Nevr-Dull was approximately $8.00 for the can.

The spoon on the right didn’t look to bad before I started polishing it, I thought it was literally a golden color. Imagine my surprise when I behold the beauty of the polished piece. Don’t get me wrong I still liked the patina on the spoon on the right but as I am going to attempt to list them this week they needed to be polished.

So lets get back to trays. This circle tray was pretty grody and has some serious gunk on it that I still need to get off but I was amazed at the difference halfway through polishing it.

The difference was noticeable immediately.

This oval tray is just beautiful and one I can’t wait to display some day. This tray I tried to do a few different pictures as I cleaned it but sometimes polishing got distracting so they aren’t the best quality photographs.

Before Picture

Before Picture

Just the edge

. Just the edge is polished in this picture, it looks brighter already.

The rim 

The whole rim of the platter is polished, you can still see the gunky along the sides.

Finished Product

The finished product turned out beautiful. Like I said before I probably need to do another session of polishing to get a few of the harder to remove spots off. Overall I’m very pleased with how this platter turned out and I’m planning on serving my Thanksgiving turkey on it.

Until Next Time,
~Kristen

This listing process

Good heavens I haven’t written a post since September. Between homeschooling, soccer, preschool, business and my husband’s activities which included running for our county Recorder office. He won by the way. Our lives have been crazy busy, but if you have been keeping tabs on the shop you should have noticed all of the new listings I’ve been busy working on.

Several weeks ago I took somewhere between 500 pictures that required editing and listing, it evened out to be about 100 new pieces for the shop. I try to take 5 photographs of each item to show all the angles and important trappings.

I’m going to talk about the process I go through for a piece after I have acquired it.

Cleaning: I clean almost every garment even if it is just a freshening up.

Steaming: I steam the wrinkles out of everything, I never use an iron on my clothing. Mostly due to the fact irons and I don’t get along, plus when I use my steamer I get the added bonus of a facial.

Photograph: As I stated before I try to get take at least 5 photographs of each piece to show every angle, imperfection,  what makes it unique, label etc. I then take my camera home and edit all of those lovely pictures I took, usually just cropping them a bit and resize them a tad.

Measure: I measure every piece and hand write my listing out in a notebook that comes to the studio and home with me. I have filled 2 notebooks already and I’m on my 3rd one for this year. I used to use bits of paper but I would lose them, so now I stick to notebooks. Plus if I ever happen to accidentally delete a listing, I can look through my notebooks and rewrite the listing out.

Research: Once I get my notebook home I go through and do research on each piece, if there is a brand label even better I try to find something comparable not only to help with SEO Tags but for price as well as history. I use the Vintage Fashion Guild daily as they have a lovely Label Resource and are just a great resource for all things vintage clothing related.

List:  Once all of that work is done, I get to go through Etsy to list this is where my handy dandy notebook comes out. Once I have something listed I draw a diagonal line through that listing and write the amount I have it listed for so I know it is done.

This isn’t a very sophisticated procedure but it works for me until I can find a more efficient way to list which will probably come in once I get a computer up in the studio for me to work from.

Until Next Time,
~Kristen