Craft TIP: Bringing out detail without danger

Do you have, or make, pieces of silver jewellery where you would like to bring out the detail a bit more by a process known as oxidising? Did you realise that you don't have to get involved with the rather dangerous messy smelly substance known as 'liver of sulphur'? How would you like to be able to oxidise your silver so safely that you can even eat the oxidising material afterwards?

I find the following process really handy when needing to oxidise small amounts of silver:

1. Take your silver with the detail to be highlighted. Here I have taken a few silver tags on which I have stamped my logo.


2. Take an egg you have just hardboiled and while it is still warm, cut it in half and place in a container you can cover with a lid, along with your silver pieces:


3. Cover the container to prevent the egg's natural sulphur fumes from escaping:


4. Use silver polish or a silver polishing cloth to remove the surface oxidation, leaving the grooves coloured and highlighted. I like my tags at this stage, not too dark; they spent just 40 minutes in the egg container:


The tag seen in use: I enjoyed the hard-boiled egg!