Pretties for Pennies

If you follow me on Facebook you've probably seen pictures posted of "the really big project"' which is my enamel testing project. I have been using pennies (yes, it's legal. I checked everything out first.) to test fire all of the enamel colors to see how they react with the copper and the torch flame. The pennies all have to be from 1981 or earlier (1982 pennies have very little actual copper in them!), and I've needed approximately 170 of them. Let me tell you, it's surprisingly hard to come by those old pennies! So, what i did was offer all my coworkers and friends "pretties for pennies". If they donated pennies to my project I made them a necklace in return; whatever their favorite color enameled on a copper washer and finished with a simple cord. Like this...

Not too bad for $.5 or $.10, right?

I'm still on the lookout for those pennies. I will have my project finished in about $.50. :-)

Here's a quick look at what I'm doing with them.