Lucky to Have Met You!

Hi there, today I want to share a special project I made at my daughter's request.   She asked me to make her two key chains using two pennies, to keep it simple and focus on the pennies.   Her anniversary was coming up and wanted to give her boyfriend something special.  We've had so many conversations about relationships over the years and I've mentioned how lucky she was to have met the love of her life as a kid and to have found each other once again as teens.  So the lucky penny came into mind for this project. 

We searched and found two pennies with the year 2011, so to make them special I used tools from ImpressArt to add their initials and a heart around the year.

A very simple project and a first for me, I've never worked with metal, stamped or hole punch on pennies, so this was a learning experience, and I have to say I'm hooked on metal stamping and look forwards to making lots of projects and sharing  them with you.

Here's a list of the products/materials I used:

• 2 Pennies
• Black Sharpie
• 2 Hole punch
• key chain with jump ring

The following products were sponsored by ImpressArt.

• Hammer 
• Stamping block 
• Stamp straight tape 
• Basic Newsprint letter stamps - uppercase 
• Lace heart design stamp

http://www.impressart.com/

Step 1

Take your two-hole punch and make a hole on the pennies to add your jump ring.

Step 2

Decide where you want to stamp and use the stamp straight tape to hold the penny and mark where each letter needs to be stamped (see photo below)

Step 3

Hold your letter stamp tight and hit it with the hammer, this was my first try and after several practices, I had to hit it about 4 times in order to see the stamped letters on the pennies.  Make sure to not remove the letter stamp because trying to go back and stamp over again is nearly impossible, I got lucky a few times but it's best to just hold it tight and make sure you taped your metal down because if you don't it will slide off the stamping block.  

On the photo below you can see two pennies stamped, I stamped what my daughter wanted in two different ways, for her to chose what she liked best.

Step 4

Once you are done stamping you can take either some acrylic black paint or a permanent sharpie marker like I did, and go over the stamped areas, and wipe off the excess black ink, this will help the stamped images to be more clear, as you can see on the photos below.

Step 5

Now that all the stamping is done, it's time to assemble your items.  I purchased these key rings fully assembled from Michaels' craft store, so all I had to do was open the jump ring at the end of the chain with my flat nose pliers add the penny and close it back with the nose pliers.  Turned out to be a very simple project, that my daughter was very happy to give to her boyfriend.

Here is a close up, have you tried metal stamping? If not, you should, it's fun and can be addictive.   I'm really having fun with what I've learned and can't wait to make more projects to share with you, thanks for stopping by.