Finding A Use For The Useless

So, I don't know how many of my readers are aware of this, but here, in Canada, our penny will soon be worthless. Well, it's practically already worthless. But they're everywhere! We find pennies in between couch cushions, in pants pockets. If we can't pay for things with them, what do we do with them?

My inspiration came from this story about a Pittsburgh man who tiled the floor of his tattoo shop with pennies.

I wasn't about to re-tile my floor, but I figured I could find other ways to use the copper coins to decorate. The easiest, cheapest, and most versatile thing to do was to make penny wall art.

And here (Of course) is how I did it!

Materials:

- an 8" x 10"  canvas        - mustard yellow acrylic paint.     - metallic gold paint

- a paint brush                  - a glue gun                                - enough pennies to cover the canvas

Step 1:

Paint the canvas with the base colour. In my case, that would be the mustard coloured paint.

Let that dry.

Step 2:

Paint on the metallic paint.  Remember to paint the edges as well for a neat finish.

Step 3:  

Glue on the pennies in rows. Don't worry about making the rows even or using pennies that are all the same level of lustre. 

I really quite like the result. I think it would look great on a shelf, with a smaller, framed picture leaned up against it.  

Fun Fact!  On the Canadian penny, when the portrait of the queen is right side up, the maple leaf emblem on the other side is also right side up.  Meanwhile, on the American penny, the opposite is true; when Abraham Lincoln's portrait is right side up, the image of the memorial on the other side is upside-down.