Will & I honeymooned in Alaska and spent a brief moment in Canada. Of course, being the coffee-lovers we are, we stopped at a coffee shop, paid with the US dollar, and got Canadian coins back. Awesome.

So what do you do with coins that you’ll never be able to use again?

The answer: make jewelry. (Before you get worried, no, it’s not illegal. I did some research.)

What you’ll need:

• Coins
• Beading wire (I got mine from WalMart)
• A drill press… Thank goodness for handy grandaddys!!
• Needle nose pliers
• Patience 🙂

What you’ll do:

1. First, choose your drill bit size and mark the coins where you’d like to drill the holes. I chose a bit that made a tiny hole just big enough for the wire to go through on either side of the coin. I marked where I wanted the holes with a pencil to make my drilling more precise.
2. Drill away! This is the part that takes patience and a bit of skill. Match up your drill to your marks and then VERY slowly and VERY gently press through the coin. The coin will spin with the drill if you don’t block it somehow. My grandaddy (the genius engineer) cut a block of wood for us to use to block the coins from spinning. This allowed us to drill the hole without roughing up the edges, breaking the bit, or getting the coin stuck.
3. Once the holes are drilled, use the drill bit to take of the rough pieces. This one is hard to explain… Um… There will be a sharp edge on the underside. Take the bit and turn it like a screwdriver to pull out the rough piece. Sounds weird and there’s probably a more precise and technical way to explain… But those are my girly directions haha.
4. Start wiring your coins together! My suggestion is to use the pliers to wrap the wire as tightly as possible. The wire will loosen over time, but if you wire it well the first time, you won’t have to worry about that too much. I weaved the wire along the back of each coin 2-3 times and then around the outside of the coin (where you see the wire “knots”) up to 10 times. Once I got to the last two coins, I snipped the wire and wrapped it tightly around the backside of the final coin.

The end result, a shiny new jewelry piece with so much meaning! Every time I wear it, it’s like a time capsule to our honeymoon. Plus, it’s a great conversation piece!

Over Christmas break I plan to make two more from my travels to Peru and Austria. Then, I’ll have some nice passport arm candy!! (Since my dog ate my real passport…)