How to Paint a Penny and Make Your Own Lucky Penny

(Last Updated On: November 12, 2019)

This is a super fun and simple (and cheap) craft to do with your kids this summer. Not only is it fun and fast, but it can bring a smile to others.

Each color of penny brings a different kind of luck but the luckiest pennies of all the glitter and swirly ones. Swirlies look great and like they are hard to make but they are actually very easy.

How to do Swirlies:

Place a penny on a clean surface. You might want to do this on cardboard to protect your floor or counter and you might want to go outside or open some windows. Nailpolish is stinky!

Drip (rather than paint) a few drops of polish on the surface of the penny (head side up!).

You should be generous with the polish, but not to the point of flooding the surface. It will spread out some to fill the area smoothly. Try not to mix the colors on the brush. Gently drip on enough blobs to cover the penny.

Work quickly before the polish dries. Take a toothpick and gently drag it through the drops to swirl the colors together.

Dragging in one direction through smaller dots creates heartlike shapes. Dragging in a spiral gives you true swirls. flicking out the edges of a dot creates a star like effect.

With a little practice you can create all kinds of shapes and effects. It’s not a perfect science and part of the fun is in the “luck” of the finished product. If you really mess up, you can always clean the penny with a little nail polish remover, and start again. But don’t try too hard to make it perfect. A fresh canvas only costs one penny and sometimes they dry even prettier than they looked wet.  We used cheap and bright polish for the most part. It worked like a charm – and lets hope the charm works!