The Great Penny Debate

 

I love working with pennies................whether enameling them, doming and linking or just linking them, to me they are like tiny canvases.  Just the right size to pair with beads for a bracelet or with some hand forged copper hardware for a necklace or, my special favorite, fire torched with some colorful enamels.......the possibilities are endless - and make, in my mind, some wonderfully unique and stylish jewelry.

These are just a few of the things I have created using the penny. 

I love my blog. I love that I can go to my studio, attempt a new skill, add to an existing skill or just play for a day, and then share my learning experience with other interested individuals.  For the most part this is the tone of each post - to share what I have learned or what I have created, and to keep it all positive and supportive - with the occasional foray into cute pet pictures/posts or landscape photos that I can't help but share - but hey, who doesn't love some of those?!  This blog is MY place.  I get to set the tone of the posts. I get to decide what I share and how I want to say things.  Don't get me wrong.....I love comments.  I love hearing from readers - what they are doing, what they have learned, what they are taking away from my experiences............the good and the bad.  I do not delete comments on a whim.......after all there is more than one side to a story - any story - and I am not adverse to having it pointed out to me. 

However, what I don't want, and what I will not post are negative comments - those that have a slight menacing tone, or are crafted to show how I am somehow 'less than' because they are so much 'more than'.  I say all this as a reply to one particular commenter - a commenter that gets a little snarkier with each comment (that I will not approve) - and in spite of the fact that I don't post his/her comment, keeps commenting.

In answer to the comments they keep making, here is my answer:

"Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States. This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent"

'Nuff said.

Thanks for listening!