The Return Of The Penny Tees

In January of 2011, my son requested that his birthday party be “iCarly-themed”, and I obliged. (If you’d care to read all about it, check out A Boys iCarly Birthday Party). Instead of putting together your usual grab bags filled with candy and stuff that gets lost/broken/forgotten about instantly, I decided that we’d give penny tees to our guests, similar to the ones seen on the show. (If you’d care to check them out, go to my iCarly Penny Tees post). Okay. So. This summer, my son finally outgrew his birthday tee, and he requested that I make him another to take its place. Hmm…

Well. It turns out that these penny tees are also quite popular with people beyond my son. My iCarly Penny Tees post has had over 5,278 visitors (!!!), and my single Pinterest pin from that post has been repined 48 times from my page alone. Not to mention all the requests to purchase these tees.   (o.O)   Long story short, I decided to make Monkeyboy Junior a new shirt – plus a few extra to drag around to the craft sales I’m showing at this fall/winter. I might even throw some of them up on Etsy {aaand done… follow this linky}, seeing as the show is wrapping up in November, and they still don’t seem to be readily available. So, for anyone still interested in getting their very own penny tee, I think we can finally arrange something. 😉

Anyhow. First, I needed some ringer tees. They are getting increasingly difficult to find, and are only available in a few colours nowadays, but I managed to pick some up at Old Navy. I also bought some Avery T-Shirt Transfers for light coloured cotton fabrics. I washed the tees, swapped the arm-bands, designed some decals on the computer (with my son’s input as to what was “funny” at his age), and ironed them on. Then, I decided to try and attach some actual pennies this go ’round. Seeing as Canadian pennies are no longer being made, and they are going out of circulation soon, I figured using them this way wouldn’t be an issue.

Drilling the holes was quite easy. I used a hammer and a screw to make little dents where I wanted the holes to go (so the drill bit wouldn’t travel across the coin). I then secured the penny to the bench using vise-grips (a clamping wrench), making sure to put a dent over a hole, so I wouldn’t drill into the workbench. Safety goggles on, smallest bit in the drill, get the drill up to speed, and away you go. I found the 2011 pennies to be the easiest to drill through – they must be made out of some kind of “softer” metal than the old pennies. Anyhow. A few stitches later, and here’s what they look like on.

And here’s what the tees look like as a whole.

I kept the text quite simple, as it was easier to read that way, but sadly the colours of the text got lost upon ironing-on (the letters were the same colour as the contrasting arm bands, but you can’t really tell anymore). Oh, well. Here’s what they look like all together.

Youth X-Small and Youth Small sizes.

Youth Medium Sizes (two are already spoken for).

Youth Large and Youth X-Large Sizes.

I think I got a little carried away. 😉 But I needed at least two of each size to swap arm bands… I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens with them now. Worst case scenario, the Monkeyboys have a schwack of fun shirts to wear and grow into. Best case scenario, a lot of people can now get shirts that make them happy. So, yeah. Penny tees. Just one of my new projects for the fall. Hope you enjoy. =)