How To Patina Copper Pennies – Easy DIY Tutorial With Video

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Do you want to know how to patina copper pennies? I love penny projects and I wanted to try to patina copper pennies and create a fun display with our initials on wooden letters that I had on hand. I’ll show you how to get that patina finish and antique look on pennies and then create a lovely display.

What is copper patina? It’s that green patina color that shows up on the surface of copper items giving copper an aged look and a rich color.

How To Patina Copper

If you want to know how to clean copper pieces please check out my other post regarding that.

How To Patina an Copper Item

Let’s get started on the patina process.

1. Wash Your Pennies –

Wash your pennies with Dawn soap, hot water, and baking soda to clean off the fingerprints, oils and dirt.

2. Drain, Rinse, & Dry your Copper

Drain the soapy baking soda water, rinse the pennies with clean water . The best way to do this is to use a strainer. Let them dry completely, you don’t want any residual moisture.

3. Soak copper in vinegar and salt mixture

To create the patina solution, mix together equal parts of white vinegar and table salt (non-iodized salt) so that it coats all of the pennies. Let the pennies soak for 30 minutes so the chemical reaction process and chemical reaction can take place. I did this in a small plastic container, but you could use a glass container like a bowl, or perhaps a bucket.

4. Drain the mixture

Drain out the mixture but don’t rinse the pennies with clean water.

5. Air dry the copper

Place the pennies on a baking sheet and let them dry completely so the oxidation process can complete its magic. You can sprinkle with more salt as they’re drying if you wish. Pennies will patina at different rates so you can play with the timing to get your desired color.

Once they’re dry they are ready to use. You’ll have a lovely patina that may be a green color, brown color, and sometimes you can even get a little blue patina color. This is one of the simplest methods for artificial patination vs the natural patina aging process

If you want to repeat the process you can also make the mixture above and put it in a spray bottle. Spray it on and let them air dry.

If you don’t like the idea of laying the copper on a pan, you can always put it on wax paper.

I like this version because it doesn’t have any dangerous chemicals.

Now if you don’t want your copper to oxidize, you can always seal it in a plastic bag or container until the next use. This works with silver as well.

How To Patina Copper Pennies DIY

Patina Copper Letters

I had these plain letters that I wanted to spruce up. I decided to use these lovely patina pennies for the project.

I placed my pennies onto the letters.

I hot glued the pennies into place.

Then you can hang them up in your home.

There are so many possible places to use these fun letters.

After making this project I had several people giggle and tell me that it’s funny “JC Penny”. I didn’t even think about that, and it is pretty funny. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Patina Coasters

So I arranged these pennies in this pattern and I glued them together, but I could easily wash the glue off. And what I’ve done is created some coasters. So I have both the shiny copper coaster as well as the patina coaster.

I think these would make a fantastic gift idea as well.

Patina Barretts

Now let’s take a barrette with the shiny pennies and the patina pennies, and I’m going to use some adhesive to stick the pennies to the barrette. And now I have a fun little hair piece that I can use anytime.

And I can choose whether I want the patina or the shiny copper penny.

I think it would be fun to create some jewelry with these pennies too. Let’s create some other DIYs.

Easy Suncatcher/Picture

For this project I used shiny pennies and I used a dollar store frame and some glass gems. I removed the backing and I laid my pennies out to spell the word luck. I used my hot glue gun to put the pennies onto the glass frame.

And then I added some glass rocks to the top to represent shamrocks and clovers and added a little bit of marker to the bottom to give them their stem. Now I have a sun catcher that I can either put the back on and make a picture or leave it as a sun catcher. For this project, I had the letters J and C after my husband and my name.

You can find this full tutorial at Easy St. Patrick’s Day Suncatcher/Picture

Garden Globe

So I grabbed some Mod Podge and I sprayed on some old pennies onto a base and made a garden globe to put in my yard. You can find the full tutorial at

You can find the full tutorial at Easy and Awesome DIY Gazing Ball Garden Globe for your Yard

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How To Patina Copper YouTube Video

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