A penny saved, is a penny you can use to tile a table-top.

This post is a little late, but if we're talking Christmas present fabrication, then it's quite early. I'm Sam, guest-blogging today with instructions on how to make a penny-topped side table.

Step 1: Decide what piece of furniture you wish to embellish. For me, the choice was obvious. My boyfriend needed bedroom furniture, so I chose a nice IKEA Rast, a side table. With unfinished wood, it was perfectly customizable.  And quite affordable, though I won’t say just how much because my boyfriend might sometime read this, and I HATE the idea of people knowing how much I spent on their present. So let’s just say, you could probably get two orders of pho for how much I spent on old Rast’y.

Step 2: Assemble said furniture, if necessary. Now, that Rasthole I bought didn’t come pre-drilled, no doubt due to the negligence of some drowsy, post-prandial Swede, too full of lingonberries and meatballs to do his damn job right. So drill those missing holes, or get your dad to help you, then put torque to Alan wrench and get the thing all set up.

Step 3: Choose your spray paint and coinage. I went with a greenish-blue, to complement the green in the copper pennies. Another combination that might work is nickel with yellow (your first inclination might be blue and nickel, but contrast is a concept that I’m getting more and more comfortable with).

Step 4: Slap on a primer coat of paint, allowing it to do dry completely. Spray paint your piece with multiple coats to ensure good coverage. I used almost an entire can.

Step 4: Measure your surface area, your coin, and do some calculations to figure out how much coin you need for your rows and columns. I can’t tell you what those calculations would be, because I didn’t do them! Take that Mr. Fella, and your multiplication tables! No, I take that back. I loved my fourth grade teacher, I just avoid math most of the time. As a result, I made two trips to get pennies and ended up scrounging through my Dad’s loose change.

Step 5: Using super glue, start gluing down the pennies/nickels/pesos in whatever pattern you like. My dad kept trying to get me to do some free-form nonsense, but you can tell by the pictures I vetoed that idea. But do what you like. Follow your own journey. Maybe your pennies should be in waves, who knows? You could clean them up, too, but I liked the higgledy-piggledy appearance of old gnarly pennies next to the shiny ones.

Step 6: Now for the hard part. You need a protective surface over those pennies. I used epoxy (about $30). I (and by I, I mean my dad and I, and mostly I just mean Dad) applied packing tape to the edges of the table to create a barrier. Then I poured epoxy evenly over the surface until I had about a half-inch thick layer. Crossing my fingers, I allowed it to dry overnight. Luckily, the layer was thin enough that all the bubbles came out just fine and I only had a small drip problem down one side. I cleaned up the edges with a razor blade so that they were somewhat smooth. 

Step 7: Unveil to your loved one! Pat yourself on the back, project well done!