Celebrate Lucky Penny Day with 7 DIY Projects Featuring Our Favorite Coin
Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.
May 23 is Lucky Penny Day, so pick up all the copper coins you can find, Abe-side up of course!
I know they’re only one cent each, but if you’re thinking saving pennies has little use, you’d be wrong. Yes, it might take what seems like forever to make a difference in a savings account, but I’ve adopted the mindset that every little bit helps.
As Kyle Taylor, The Penny Hoarder’s CEO, says, “Take care of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.”
But there are tons of uses for a penny beyond letting its tiny power gain strength in your bank account. In honor of this wacky holiday, I’m sharing some alternative uses for our favorite little coin.
7 Penny Crafts You Can Make With Our Favorite Coin
Now, there are a bunch of practical uses for a penny.
It’s never to early to teach your children about money. Teach them to count — and introduce them to the basics of money — with pennies.
You could use a penny in place of a slot-head screwdriver or to measure the tread in your car’s tire.
Fun fact: if you line up 16 pennies in a row, you can create a makeshift 12-inch ruler.
You can also glue a coin or two to the bottom of a chair leg to stabilize a wobbly chair.
But those are all slightly boring.
If you really want to jazz things up, consider all the DIY crafts you can make with a penny — or 13,000. Polish off your pennies and your DIY skills and check out these seven projects.
1. Penny Ring
Let’s start with something simple. Take your favorite lucky penny (maybe one with your birth year or the one you stuck in your shoe on your wedding day) and turn it into a ring.
All you’ll need is super glue, a short piece of rhinestone trim, wire, pliers and something circular to wrap your wire around. For instructions, check out this blog by Trinkets in Bloom.
2. Penny Bracelet
This DIY piece of jewelry involves pressed pennies — you know, the kind you get as souvenirs from Disney, museums and other tourist-y spots, perhaps even at rest stops during your road trip. Penny Hoarder editor Rain Turner made one and wrote about it for World of Walt several years back.
In addition to several pressed pennies, you’ll need a hammer, a small steel nail, a clamp, a small piece of cloth, beads, chain, beading wire, jump rings, jewelry pliers with round tips and a toggle clasp.
Follow these instructions and you can turn small souvenir trinkets into a memorable piece of jewelry.
3. Coin Barrettes
Make an inexpensive hair clip featuring Abe Lincoln. Select your shiniest pennies to make this hair accessory bling.
You’ll only need about three pennies, a plain barrette clip and super glue or contact cement. See Auntie Anne’s Crafts for details on how to put this together.
4. Penny Coasters
Impress guests at your next dinner party with these custom drink coasters. The blog Seriously I’m Thrifty did this with Canadian pennies, but American coins would work just fine.
To make your coaster you’ll need a disposable cup, a disposable spoon, coaster molds, petroleum jelly, resin and a straw or lighter, in addition to a handful or so of pennies. See this for directions to walk you through the process of creating your own.
5. Penny Tiled Mirror
Making a penny-tiled mirror is a unique way to add some character to your home decor. This project will take several dozen pennies. Just how many will depend on how large your mirror is.
The blog Real Happy Space used a small circular mirror, a plywood circle, wood finish and hot glue. You can do something similar but frame out a rectangular mirror, like the one shown on Honey Sweet Home.
6. Penny Table
The Penny Hoarder headquarters is home to a neat penny table designed with Abraham Lincoln’s face.
If you want to try this project yourself, check out Heart Maine Home’s blog post on how to create one. They transformed a side table by adding a trim and some paint, using super glue and Gorilla Glue to affix the pennies and applying an epoxy glaze to smooth out the surface.
You could also try this for a countertop, like at Domestic Imperfection. They did things by trial and error and made a few mistakes you can learn from.
7. Penny Floor
Now if you are really ambitious, you can cover a whole floor in pennies.
USA Love List used over 10,500 pennies — or a little over $100 in coins — to cover a 38 square-foot kitchen floor. Their other supplies included a 12” by 12” picture frame, contact paper, glue, epoxy and a heat source like a blowtorch or a blow dryer. Read step by step instructions on the installation here.
If you love the idea but are intimidated by the size of a whole floor, you can try covering the ground of your shower stall instead. The family blogging at A Building We Shall Go did this with about 5,382 pennies, glue, grout and epoxy.
For more awesome craft ideas, plus recipes, career advice, money tips and more, visit The Penny Hoarder’s Pinterest page.
Nicole Dow is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She pinned the penny floor idea to her personal Pinterest page, well before she started working at The Penny Hoarder and wrote this story. She’s saving that DIY project for when she becomes a home owner.
