A guide on how to ensure your photo pendant has a long and enjoyable life.
These pendants are not made to be worn 24 hours a day. Constant wearing of any jewellery will decrease its functional life. Wearing these pendants when sleeping, cleaning, exercising, gardening, bathing, showering,swimming, or washing will potentially damage them.
Wearing perfumes, deodorants, hairspray, medical creams or washing them with water or any chemical will start a chemical reaction which can potentially damage your photo pendant.
Rubbing the image with your hands, a common comforting behaviour, (particularly when grieving), will start a chemical reaction. Your sweat is acidic. This can corrode the image and will cause the pendant to deteriorate rapidly. The pendant can be scratched by contact with hard surfaces.
To maintain a photo pendant in its original condition we recommend the minimum amount of contact with your hands or skin as the sweat that perspires from your skin is acidic and will corrode the pendant very quickly.
Photo Pendant UK is not responsible for damage caused in any of the above circumstances. NO EXCEPTIONS.
How to look after your photo pendant:
1/ When finished wearing a light polishing with a dry lense cleaning cloth will help protect it. Only brush very gently on the photo surface a few times but more vigorously on the reverse face, especially if it has come into contact with your skin.
This blog explains the problems which arise from the unique appeal of photo pendants. The Photo etching technique which creates a photo pendant impacts on the face of the pendant very lightly. Only microns. This etching reflects light at different angles. This is what your eye sees. Jewellery in general is worn next to the skin and touched by hands. Both have human sweat which is acidic. Human sweat corrodes the plating which will make the photos disappear. All types of jewellery have this problem. Silver turns black. Gold is mixed with other metals like tin to stop it wearing away to nothing. Rhodium is a very hardwearing metal which is used frequently as a plated finish on gold to slow down the erosion of this precious metal. Another problem for photo pendants we have learnt through experience is people play with their jewellery all the time without realising they are doing so. All jewellery pendants experience wear as they move and rub on the skin or the persons clothing. Because our pendants have a photo of someone they love, when someone is wearing their photo pendant they touch it all the time; applying fresh acid to the pendant with their fingers every few minutes. This is particularly true when people are grieving, they rub their photo pendants with their thumbs. It is a comforting behaviour which unfortunately means they are repetitively rubbing acid into the face of the pendant! When people are grieving their body is suffering extreme stress. This makes their perspiration more acidic. This attacks the jewellery even more. These photo etched pendants would last hundreds of years if people didnt touch them! However this is not practical, so we apply a plastic coating to our photo pendants to protect them. However if the person is grieving or wearing their pendant all the time this coating will eventually rub off. Its not the pendant it is how it is treated.