Growing up, my family went on lots of adventures. In order to remember our trips, my sisters and I each had to come up with cheap and small souvenirs we could collect at each place. One collected postcards, another collected pencils. My fourth sister collected magnets while the youngest collected pins. I collected smashed pennies.

I have always loved my collection, but they were stashed away in 5 separate smashed penny books. I dreamed of displaying my pennies in a fun and tasteful way in our entryway and finally, my dream has come true! Along with my favorite quote, I’m so happy to see 172 that reflect an enjoyed life fun of adventures and fun! Here’s how I did it!

First, the tedious part. Taking all my pennies out of the 5 tucked away smashed penny books, counting the total, and then counting how many horizontal versus how many vertical. In my case, I counted 176 pennies (I’m positive I have others hidden somewhere in this house…). 86 of the pennies were horizontal and 81 were vertical. I had a few random train track smashed pennies, smashed quarters, and foreign coins that I would use as fillers, just in case.

After having fun with counting, I tried different arrangements. White background? Black background? What kind of frame? I used different frames around my house and arranged pennies on top of them to get the best idea. Not only that, but it was important to come up with a pattern. Originally, I thought I would do horizontal, vertical, horizontal, vertical because I had almost the same amount of horizontal pennies as I did vertical. However I found that doing that pattern left a lot of empty space in the arrangement. In the end, I opted for opposite rows. A row of horizontal pennies, a row of vertical pennies, and so forth.

I realized around this time that I was going to have to create my own custom frame for this project. The size was unique and I wanted all my pennies represented- not a frame with not enough space and not a frame with no extra space. On my carpet, I laid out what I had planned so I could get the dimensions right. I was planning on ordering a 12×12 custom quote as well so I laid out one of my extra 12×12 Hobby Lobby papers for spacing purposes. After laying out my pennies in the way I wanted them, I measured the length and width.

Now we get to the fun part! My husband watched the kids at home while I went to Lowe’s on my own. Ahhh. So calm. Do you know how hard it is to shop for the correct size of wood with kids? Very. And luckily, I found a board with the EXACT dimensions I needed! This particular board was 24″x11″.

While at Lowes, I also purchased 4 long thin boards, white matte spray paint, sand paper, and honey oak stain. I took everything home, arranged the pennies, then decided exactly how much I needed to have cut from my thin boards to make a frame. Golly, I need to buy myself some sort of wood cutter, because I took my tiny little things back to Lowe’s to have them custom cut for me. The attendant had never cut anything so small and ended up really off on the cut. SO I SANDED DOWN THE REST. Do you know how long that took me? A long time. But it’s okay, it’s okay. The entire project was worth it in the long run.

Painting time! I chose a white matte spray paint because first, I have a 2 month old baby. I don’t have time to paint something by hand. Spray paint is awesome! And I chose to do matte rather than glossy because I knew the pennies would be shiny. I don’t need a ton of shiny-ness going on! In the mean time, I stained the frame boards a honey oak color. I had ordered my custom frame in honey oak from Walgreen’s and I wasn’t about to have my two framed displays mismatch!

So the next task scared me half to death. I thought the project was done for! So pay CLOSE ATTENTION to this part if you’re planning on doing a smashed penny display!!

I wanted to have beautiful shiny pennies for my display so I looked on Pinterest for a smashed penny cleaning recipe. The recipe I found on Pinterest made my pennies EVEN WORSE. I was so worried! So I started researching and looking for ways to fix it! Turns out that the person who wrote the recipe down did not add the second part that was very necessary for making your pennies shine rather than look dull. This is how mine turned out.

Once my frame pieces and board was finished, I gorilla glued my frame on the board. Yep. Gorilla glue. And it worked awesome. That took about a day to glue and set the whole frame. After the frame was set, I added wall mounts to the back of the frame.

I arranged my pennies on the board next before gluing. I needed to make sure they were spaced out perfectly before gluing them on permanently. Can you imagine gluing them and then not having enough room on the bottom for the rest of your pennies? Oh man! Furthermore, I had to turn 22 horizontal pennies vertical, so I had to make sure I did that right.

After the pennies were glued, I immediately mounted my display up on my wall. Doesn’t it just look perfect with that quote and wreath? Now I can finally and proudly show all the places I have been in a decorative and artistic way! How are you going to display your collection?