How I Found My Way Into "Jewelry Stringing" Magazine

Edited to add a section in the end for Chloe's comments for international artists.

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Let me start off with thanking everyone who joined me in my crazy excitement over getting published. That is everyone who left comments on my blog and on Facebook and sent emails. A big hug back to you all, I feel much loved :-)

A lot of people asked me HOW I got my design published. While I remember what all I did to get there, I sort of forgot why I wanted to get published in the first place! I had started the process when I had not even seen a jewelry design magazine before, the Bead Soup Cafe and Creative Bead Chat groups had not yet been started on Facebook, and I was less than a year old in this field. So even I was wondering about what made me do it. Thankfully, I had written a blog post about it :)
The question at that time was should I Submit My Designs To Stringing Magazine?
You will have to go read that post to find out more ;-)

The magazine publishes their call for submissions wayyyy ahead of time. When I looked, they had put up guidelines and themes for the entire year of 2012. I was too late for Spring and Summer, but was in time for Fall and Winter. What impressed me was the prep-work they did! For an issue coming out in September, they set the submission deadline in March. 6 months!

There were two ways to send in the submissions:
1) Pre-submission by email: You can submit pictures of your projects to them. The deadline for this is about two weeks before the "in office" deadlines. They review the pictures and respond back if they want to look at anything for further consideration. This does not guarantee that the pieces will be included, just means that they would like to take a closer look.
2) Just send everything, the piece, the instructions, everything to them directly without the pre-screening.

I went with option 1.

The Fall themes were: Jewelry made with multiple strands, clasp as focal, oversized beads, silk cord or earth tones.

The Winter themes were:  Jewelry made with fire-polished beads, a geometric motif, or a lacy look; choker-style necklaces.

They were also looking for earrings and bracelets for the galleries. Now, when I submitted, I had not actually SEEN the magazine before, so I had no idea what galleries these were! But I sent in my pictures anyway.

For Fall, I sent these two earrings that I made out of clasps. I guess I had completely misunderstood the theme. They were looking for necklaces and bracelets with the theme, and I sent them earrings!

For Winter, I sent in this necklace (at least with this one, I was not too far off what they wanted)

(psst...isn't this set gorgeous?)



Before I tell you what happened next, I have to say this: The folks at Stringing mag are THE best! Very helpful and friendly, and extremely prompt!

So I emailed these pictures and they got back to me the next day that they have received my submission, and will get back to me when they wrap up with their Spring/Summer work. About 10 days later, they wrote back, asking me to send in the chain earrings and the lace necklace, along with instructions for the necklace. Their submissions guidelines has sample instructions, so writing it up following that is quite easy.

I mailed the pieces to them sometime towards the end of Feb. I heard back from them beginning of April that the earrings were selected. They were hanging on to the necklace until they got around to working on their Winter issue. There was some paperwork that we got out of the way in May (contracts and tax forms, etc). And I got the magazine in my hands in August. The necklace was not selected and they sent it back to me along with the necklace.

So that was my story. I emailed them quite a lot with all kinds of questions, and they were always very patient and courteous and friendly (you can tell I can go on for a while about how much I liked working with them) every time.

Brenda Sue at B'Sue Boutiques has also done a blog post about submitting to Stringing: Don't Make It Hard. As she says, it is quite easy! So go for it!

Stringing just put up their guidelines for Spring 2013 submissions. Do take a look and go ahead, take the first step :-)

I am going to ask Chloe from Interweave to drop by here and comment in case I have missed out anything.

Here are links to submission forms for some other magazines too if you would like to explore:

Bead Trends: I had submitted once to them, never heard back

Bead Style: I have never submitted here

These are the ones I know of and have looked at. I bet you can go to the website of your favorite magazine and find their guidelines.

I would like to end with: magazines are always looking for fresh ideas and designers, and actually do look forward to seeing your work. So don't be scared, shy or whatever else it is that is holding you back. Just do it :-)

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Note for international submissions:

Good question.

We don’t have any special instructions for international submissions per se, but there can be some trickiness surrounding shipping to and from other countries. Customs laws are different in pretty much every country, and often international contributors will notify us of any special shipping methods/labeling that needs to happen on our end. We have heard that in some countries there are hefty fees that need to be paid before packages containing returned jewelry submissions can be claimed by their authors. It is a good idea for international artists to look into the specific customs laws/fees in their country so that they know what to expect and so that we can do everything in our power to make the shipping process a smooth in both directions.

Best,

Chloe Chatenever

Assistant Editor

Jewelry Stringing Magazine

cchatenever@interweave.com

(970) 776-1468