Birthday Plaque

I've been so excited about posting this!  I had to wait until at least one gift recipient saw it, though.

Remember I blogged about the Lazy Susan covered in pennies?

Well continuing on with my penny theme, I made a birthday plaque for Ryan and Beth's engagement.  The plaque has all of their family member's birthdays.  I used a drawer face to make it.
  

This is Arden's old dresser that we have turned into a temporary craft/school/crap cabinet.  (I thought Jack's marker drawings on it was a nice touch to show how rickety it is.)  It's a very solid piece, but the drawers are broken.  So we are going to make it more useful for school stuff by pulling out the broken drawers and adding shelves. We are also going to paint the entire thing.  I've seen many projects done with drawers and couldn't wait to try something myself.  Hence, the middle missing drawer face is what I stole for this project! I love the etchings on the drawers.  I thought the design on it gives it a classic feel.

This is the birthday board....!!   I hung it up to show it off better.  It's been hanging on my wall for a few weeks and I've gotten a few ooohs and ahhhhs on it.  A conversation piece for sure!  :)

I removed the hardware of the drawer and painted the board.  I stenciled the letters and added hooks.  Each bottom letter corresponds with a month.  Hanging from the hooks are pennies.  Each penny has a family member's name metal-hand-stamped into it along with the date they were born.  (i.e.  My birthday is May 10.  My penny simply has "Bobbie" and the number "10" on it.  It is hung under May.)  I got a work out for sure hammering all of the letters and numbers into the pennies.  I also punched most of the top and bottom holes into the penny manually with a hammer and nail.   It made me feel very manly and buff!  :)  This is because originally we thought that the penny was too small for Brian's drill.  Turns out it's not, so once Brian started drilling holes, the project went by much faster.  The holes allow for the pennies to be connected by jump rings.  As family members are added into the family I can always add new pennies.

a close-up of October.  Eli with 15 since his bday is Oct.15.

Then I added one ,metal heart with Beth and Ryan and 24.  It's hung under May since that's their future wedding date!