To the Art Jewelry editors

SPAM

Bentiron — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:28:34 GMT

SPAM used to stand for Specially Processed American Meat but not any more, now it is used for any unwanted, unsolicited advertisements and other emails. I for one am finding that the Art Jewelry Forum is becoming fouled with SPAM. There are some business owners that are friendly and courteous contributors to the forum but others are just here to peddle their wares and contribute nothing. I am finding it rather tiresome to go through the increasing number of meaningless commercial posts. If they want to advertise with Art Jewelery let them pay as do the other commercial companies or delete their posts. They are ruining a very good community. Thank you, Bentiron

Etchant Solution

Swiffer — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 17:20:58 GMT

Though many current book and magazine articles highlight the great results that can be had stamping metal with Staz-on ink pads and then dipping the object in Radio Shack's PCB Etchant, unfortunately Radio Shack has discontinued carrying this product nationwide. It has been pulled from store shelves and they won't be selling it online either. Can you suggest an alternative product to get the great results we're seeing in the current literature? I have read that people who make their own circuit boards use a solution of one part muriatic acid to two parts hydrogen peroxide as a substitute for PCB etchant, but I know less than nothing about chemistry and don't want to fool around with anything dangerous.

Article Idea

delinquent beader — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:37:48 GMT

Subscription

Elfu — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:21:03 GMT

I jus get my May 2008 issue today, which was my last on from this subscription. If I subscribe again for a one year I will get July 2008 issue? I just dont want to get may issue 2nd time :)

Cheers, Mark

etiquette re how to projects

earthwalker — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:57:20 GMT

Many magazines publish "how to. . ." projects. If a reader makes the project as published what is the etiquette involved? Of course I would never take credit for the design and idea but I have made several items as published in various art jewelry magazines and get all sorts of compliments as well as "can you make me one too?" Can I sell it to them? It would be helpful to me and I'm sure to others as well if your editors could discuss this in an upcoming edition of Art Jewelry magazine.

Thanks!

earthwalker

Thank you...

prseaglass — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:00:17 GMT

....for the 50% sale on projects from the magazine. I'm not a subscriber...yet, so it's great to be able to check out some of the projects from the magazine at a terrific discount. Great stuff!

polymer clay

Chrissi eM — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:46:20 GMT

I bought some polymer clay at a bootsale, and have just now found it again after a tidy up, it is about 4 years old and is a fimo branded type, is it too old to use, or can it be reconditioned ?, I tried to use some and it crumbled when I tried to roll it, I heard that you can use baby oil to recondition it, will it work?

Bonus Content Gallery

Bentiron — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:44:02 GMT

I have enjoyed looking at the enamels in the Bonus Gallery however I think it is time for a change. One item that might be nice to see is art /jewelry/metalsmith schools/programs that are available out there. The number of posts of people asking where can I go are numerous. Putting the spot light on some of the better public institutions of higher education may be both interesting and beneficial. Not just the East Coast but a sampling of the whole country. If highlighting a school is not possible what is next for the Bonus Content Gallery?

Video - reticulation

AgOpalObsession — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:36:07 GMT

Hi,

A suggestion for a video, since you're solciting them. I love the look of reticulated metal, but the books I've read differ widely in both theory and practice.

I'd be thrilled to see your take on it, particularly in the form of an instructional video.

Thanks!

jon

Why no more glass??

mommadukey — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:10:16 GMT

When Art Jewelry first hit the stands, it contained info on glass - remember "No kiln - No problem" ? I loved how jewelry and glass were in the same mag!! So I got myself a script and BOOM - no more glass!!! ANY chance of glass returning??? Or maybe you need a new contributor........;)

Sandy

Is index available for content of magazines?

Kyra — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:09:57 GMT

Hi,

While I always enjoy flipping thru all of my Art Jewerly magazines, sometimes it is a bit time-consuming to find a certain article or project. Is there a online index that would allow me to look up which issue contains what I am looking for? If not, could you make one available?

Thanks,

Kyra

New subgroup suggestion

klarsp — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:36:26 GMT

I have been on other jewelry boards and found at least one that had a very useful subgroup--"please critique" or something like that. While show your work would remain the place for people to post and safely get their kudos, a subgroup that was meant for work to be critiqued would be more helpful for those who actually want a polite but honest critique of their work. Even as a relative beginner, I find this type of forum useful because I can see some of the same problems as have been pointed out in others work for correction in my work and use the suggestions.

All in all, now that the pages load faster, I have been quite pleased with the redo and hope to spend even more time perusing the forums.

klarsp

"Tough Cuff" project technical question

Heron_Moon_Designworks — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:51:36 GMT

In the materials list and the instructions for this project, I see that medium solder is called for.

Forgive this beginner's ignorance, but does this mean medium silver solder, or is there such a thing as copper solder? In the one day-length workshop I've taken on working with a torch, our instructor mentioned, in passing, that copper could be soldered using silver solder, but that unless one achieved a near-perfect join, the silver solder would show. If one of us asked him whether copper solder exists, I cannot remember the answer.

Thanks in advance,

Terri Kiplinger, of Heron Moon Designworks

http://heronmoon.etsy.com

Current Mag

Wireywoman — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:24:50 GMT

I just wanted to say that the current mag, the project from the photo cover - REALLY cool! I very much appreciate it. It was just a really interesting project to me.

THANKS!

Reticulation & Anticlastic Cuff

danni — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:01:55 GMT

I just love the cuff in the Jan. 08 issue. I do have a question though, what suppliers sell sinusoidal stakes?

Danni

source for Roman glass shards

sbrer91 — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:55:00 GMT

I have been searching for some time for a source of Roman glass shards for use in jewelry. Help! Thank you. sbrer91@bellsouth.net

juried art show application question

rclaybeadjewelry — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:09:07 GMT

When it comes to art show and festivals you might as well just call me "newbie."

I'm stuck on an application question...what "medium" am I using? I am confused because with my jewelry this is very broad. My husband and I make our own porcelain beads, mainly focal points and accents. Our jewelry is then composed using a variety of methods, mainly wire wrapped or strung using different beading techniques, ie. peyote. I'd say at least 50% of each piece is comprised of glass, metal, wood, gems etc. I saw on one application where "jewelry" was classed as a "medium." Is this correct?

I'd really appreciate help with my dilema. Thanks in advance

newbie

Archived Forum

blue piranha — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:48:42 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to go back and read some old posts from the archived forum; however, I get a "user not found" error when I click on any of the categories in the old forum. It was my understanding that the data there would still be available to us; is that not correct?

Thanks,

Jill

good online supplier for jewellery tools ???

magnusanderson23 — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 07:08:13 GMT

As I need a new hand torch and some other jewellery tools I need your recommendation regarding a good online supplier.

Enameling

oneshining — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:47:28 GMT

Could we please have a section for enameling under jewelry making?

I would like to say the same for Pewter, since it's a metal that needs to be kept seperate from any other kind of metal, as well as worked with differently, the general metalsmithing practices don't really apply. And it is a really easy metal to work with in a limited home studio.

Lu Ann M.

Nanz Aalund / Termination from the magazine

loopy — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:40:12 GMT

I simply can’t believe how outrageously unprofessional Hazel Wheaton’s Orchid post regarding Nanz Aalund’s termination from the magazine – I’m still shaking my head….

I'd been reading / scanning through the thread Minimal Metalsmithing on Orchid (ganoksin.com), and came to the Tuesday, August 07 digest and was absolutely shocked that Art Jewelry Magazine decided it would be appropriate to discuss Nanz Aalund's termination from the magazine on a public forum! It's not 'our' business that Nanz was fired, it's Kalmbach Publishing Company business. Please make amends to your subscribers and advertisers privately, and spare us the gory details of Art Jewelry Magazine employee relations issues.

Site Issues

oneshining — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 04:45:44 GMT

This is what happens to me on my computer when I'm trying to use the forums or even load the site!

'It's mind numbing how many times this page loads on my computer before I can finish typing a reply, first the page loads in code and I have to wait for that, then it goes blank for a while, then it finally loads in what I can actually read. It takes forever! And some of my typing gets wiped out'. I replied to someone else in the forums who was having the same problems, and asking others about it.

Then when the site loads with out fail I get an alert box each time that tells me there is a script running that is slowing down the Flash 9, do you want to abort it. And I always have to click yes or the site will not load at all.

PLEASE, get rid of the extra JAVA, it is so not needed to run this site. My son started going to school at a post secondary level for IT two years before he graduated H.S. he even knows you don't need JAVA (I taught him most of what he knows about IT) and the Flash movies and animation just simply choke the band width please use something more compatible with all plateforms like Director. Director is so much better at running movies across plateforms than Flash, I mean flash is just an add on like Fireworks is, Flash will never be a decent stand alone program, it was never programed to be a stand alone and it still isn't!!! Just like excel will never be comptible with InDesign or Quark. And Videos from this site, are useless unless everyone has a T1 line in there home.

The decision-making process. Or, "Why are there three forums?"

Hazel Wheaton — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:20:31 GMT

It's been a week, and looking back, I find it highly ironic that I expected Art Jewelry to be the quietest and lowest-traffic of the three new forums.

I've been away from the office for a week on a sorely needed vacation, but I'm back now. For all those who are wondering about the decision to split the forums into three, I'm here to provide it, for one simple reason: It was my decision.

When we first met — the Editors and Publisher of Art Jewelry, Bead & Button, and BeadStyle — to talk with the online department about the prospect of revamping our sadly underutilized Web sites, one of my first requests was that Art Jewelry have its own, separate forum.

I wanted this because I felt — and feel — quite strongly that the forum that Art Jewelry sponsors should reflect the content and identity of Art Jewelry. We are not and have never been a bead magazine, and the forum as it existed overwhelmingly catered to beaders. This is not in any way a negative characteristic, it was simply the nature of the forum, which had first come into being as serving the Bead&Button readership, then expanded to the BeadStyle readership when that magazine was launched. Art Jewelry, as a newer publication, was a late add-on. While there were a few threads that were interesting and useful to metalsmiths and other jewelry-makers, they were added far down at the bottom of the page, and remained low-traffic. The sense of the page, from the permanent "Bead Talk" folder at the very top of the page on down, was that it was a beader's forum, and I did receive comments from metalsmiths and other jewelry makers to the effect that they wished there was a place for them, or that they never felt that the forum was for them. The forum members who were in Art Jewelry's readership scope were simply being drowned out by those who were in Bead&Button's and BeadStyle's.

This was my primary consideration for the change. I made this decision with the expectation that the Art Jewelry site would lose traffic, which I was willing to chance, and knowing that we might lose ad revenue, since the majority of the advertisers were bead-specific. And I still think the decision was necessary to best serve our readership. The forum was already huge and unwieldy for the moderators, so the option of adding Art Jewelry-specific folders to the already overlooked cluster at the bottom of the page didn't seem workable.

As far as adding bead content here, in the form of additional, specifically bead-related folders, we have no plans to do so. The discussion folders we set up are all topics that we cover in Art Jewelry magazine, and that's the deciding factor for their inclusion.

And finally, I ask you all to be courteous and respectful to Katie. She is the moderator, and the official voice of the Art Jewelry forum. She does have the authority to remove threads that are off-topic or out of line. The moderator is the voice of authority on the site, and her decisions need to be accepted by the site's users. With such a major overhaul there are bound to be glitches, and with an online department that is responsible for maintaining the sites of 15 separate titles, all problems are not going to be solved instantaneously — although they will be solved as quickly as our Web wizards can do so. Katie has been gracious and kind and she has my full support, as Editor of Art Jewelry.

About this particular thread/folder...

Hazel Wheaton — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:01:02 GMT

I just returned from a week's vacation; today's my first day back in the office, so this topic has been a bit quiet from my end.

Just as a quick reminder, this is the place where you can talk to the editors — we can handle questions about content, whether online or in print, including submission information and editorial decision-making. We are not Web experts, however (although we're certainly Web enthusiasts). The best place to make posts about the site's functionality (or lapses therein), is one folder up, in "About this Web Site: post technical questions about the forum here."

Whenever the editors get a question we can't answer, we'll forward it on to the online department, and you'll get a reply from us along the lines of "we've sent this query on, someone will check on it, please be patient." And when I'm out of the office for a week, you might not get that — which I imagine would be frustrating.

Thanks again — it's good to be back!

Hazel

lampworking?

karri — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:05:43 GMT

Dear Editors: Is there any chance of a lampworking forum being created in the future? Since my original interest was glass, and after making hundreds of beads, I had to get into jewelrymaking/metalsmithing to do something with all these beads. Thanks, Karri