I enjoy dressing up our dining room table for the holidays . We don’t use the table often (like never) and it’s in the main part of our house so it’s the perfect stage for a holiday tablescape that is seen but never used. I’m budget conscious when I do a tablescape and I enjoy the challenge of creating new themes and designs while trying to use a lot of what I already have. Therefore, I reuse, repurpose, recycle and upcycle decorations instead of searching the internet and hitting “order now” on all new decor themes and colors. Especially now, I don’t feel it’s fiscally responsible to spend our money on home decor in a time when many people are challenged with procuring life necessities. Sure, there will be a few new filler pieces I add to most of my tablescapes but home decor will never be all new stuff that I ran out and ordered online or found at Home Goods. No, my tables aren’t going to be featured on HGTV or Better Homes & Gardens but my tables will be budget and environmentally friendly! One way I saved some money for my fall tablescape is this DIY penny plate charger. Check it out below!
A $2.50 DIY penny plate charger
This year I’m using copper in my fall decor (if you tablescape often, buy one clearance set of silverware in copper, gold and silver that can be reused for any tablescape decor/theme you choose). This week I shared my dollar store fall haul where I picked up several charger plates for only a dollar (see the blog post about all the great deals HERE). Unfortunately, none were copper. I would like to use copper charger plates on my table and I saw a set of 6 chargers on Amazon for $50. NO WAY! I’m not planning on spending $50 on the entire table let alone just the chargers! It dawned on me that pennies were copper and I could make my own DIY penny plate charger. Not only did one plate take only 5 minutes to make, it also cost less than $2.50! Too good not to share! For this DIY you only need three things. I used one of the dollar store charger plates, a handful of pennies and a glue gun.
Budget & time friendly DIY
I hot glued the pennies to the outer edge of the plate (no particular way, just grab and glue!) Because an eating plate will be placed on top of the charger plate there is no need to cover the entire charger with pennies. Just cover enough of the charger for your dining plate to cover. Two rows of pennies around the plate, plus a third tow on top of the first two (to cover any gaps) was sufficient for the plates I am using on my table. This is a GREAT project to get the kids to help with (as long as you are comfortable them handling a glue gun). My daughter and I made two charger plates in less than 10 minutes!
Cleaning pennies
A quick note about cleaning pennies. I did NOT clean the pennies before this DIY but I did try. I just grabbed a bunch from our change bucket and started the project. The DIY penny plate charger would look better had I either cleaned pennies first or purchased new pennies from the bank (if the coin shortage allows that right now). Again, for me it’s always a time issue and cleaning took too long. However, I dd TRY to clean the pennies using methods I found online. I tried soaking pennies in vinegar/salt bath, a peroxide bath, a coke bath and Brasso metal polish scrub. Maybe I was impatient and didn’t allow enough time for these methods to work but the vinegar/salt bath, peroxide bath and coke bath did not work at all in cleaning the pennies (had I left them in the bath overnight, I may have had better results…again no time or patience). The Brasso Metal Polish DID work (find it here) really well and was the only good result I got instantly. Since I did not have the time or patience to clean all the pennies, I used uncleaned pennies. The only clean pennies used in the DIY were the three you see in this picture!
