The first couple of times I took my son to Disney World, I kept him busy when we were shopping in the parks with pennies and starting him collecting pressed pennies. It's a really cheap souvenir at $0.51 each.
There are penny presses in lots of stores, rides, and countries. Our collection grew and grew and got put in a pressed penny book that they conveniently sell all over Disney World.
This got tucked away in a drawer only to be seen on the rare occurrence of my son's room getting cleaned. Then he decided that he didn't want them anymore. How sad!
To me, these are memories and souvenirs of wonderful trips to Disney. So I put them in a box and saved them, knowing that I would figure out something to do with them one day.
That day came when my daughter sent me a post on Pinterest with a photo of pressed pennies on a canvas in the shape of Mickey's head. I loved the idea and I had to try it.
First I picked out a large canvas and painted it black (Thanks John!) with regular acrylic paint.
I wanted to really keep the Mickey head shape so I printed a pattern to trace onto the canvas. Mine was so big that I had to print it on 2 pieces of paper and tape it together.
I added a download tab on my homepage so you can download the pattern if you'd like.
I measured and marked the center of my canvas. You can see in the picture above where I folded the pattern in half to line up the pattern. I also measured from top to bottom to line it up horizontally as well. I used a pencil to trace along the edge.
Don't worry about the pencil line, it will be erased at the end.
If you haven't purchased your pressed pennies yet, my advice is to find new pennies, shiny pennies and use those. But if you already have a collection of pressed pennies, they may not all be in pristine condition. To clean them I used Tarn-X and let them soak overnight. Then I used an old toothbrush to give them a scrub. They didn't all come perfectly clean, but I like all the different patenas of the pennies.
After they were clean, I started gluing them on with a hot glue gun. Some patterns are horizontal and the majority are vertical. I just fit them in as best I could.
Let me tell you, this was a lot of pennies! And sadly, I didn't have enough to finish. When my daughter and I went on Whirlwind Disney Weekend, I took a bag of quarters and pennies with a mission to get enough to complete this project. Got home, glued them on, and wouldn't you know it...still not enough. Ugh. Luckily my Disney-holic child went back to Disney this past weekend with her friends and got the rest for me. It took a total of 153 pennies to complete this project. And if you're wondering, it cost $78.03 just for the pennies.
After getting all my pennies glued on, I took an eraser and cleaned up all the visible pencil marks.
The only thing left to do after that was find a nice place to hang it.
I just love how it turned out! We plan to dedicate this whole wall to Disney.
What fun ideas do you have for pressed pennies?
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