Cheaper than Tarnex - homemade tarnish remover

I've been playing around with the idea of covering a tabletop with pennies for awhile now and the different shades of copper go perfectly with the warm colors in my living room. I saw a few tutorials online about covering the surface with resin but ,honestly, that sounded like way more work than I was willing to put into it. The thought of having to construct some sort of ledge to contain the mess completely intimidated me. So, the next best option....grout. Which is what I did. But more on that later.

First thing I had to do was get all those old pennies looking a little more presentable and of course, oops, no Tarnex. So what would any normal girl do in that situation? I Googled it! It would seem vinegar would do the trick, and hey I had plenty of that. So here is how it all went down...

I gathered up all the spare pennies I had laying around the house and put them into a large bowl. I chose a white one so I could really see the gunk coming off.

Pretty icky, huh?

Next I grabbed a canister of good 'ol fashioned table salt and dumped it on. I literally mean dumped. I just emptied what was left in the jar. I would say it was probably less than a 1/4 cup. I figured the salt would help by adding a little abrasion.

 

Then I added enough vinegar to just cover and began to swirl. At that point my handy 4 year old helper, Drake, wanted in on the action so I equipped him with a wooden spoon and told him to keep mixing it up. I could see results almost instantly. I was rather shocked to be honest. After 3 or 4 minutes I had a brilliant (maybe) idea that I should add some baking soda. Everyone knows that baking soda and vinegar react to each other so they must do something, right? To tell you the truth, I don't know if it did anything at all. All that happened was the bowl fizzed up and Drake got mad at me because he couldn't see the pennies anymore. So I will consider that an "optional" step.

After I decided that they weren't getting any cleaner, I dumped them into a colander and rinsed them off really well. Then poured the pennies into an old dish towel and let Drake dry his little heart out.

Here is the finished result. I know you can't tell much a a difference from this picture so let's try this...

Much, much better.

Overall, I'd say it cleaned then fairly well. They aren't sparkling like they just came off the press but for basic purposes I think my mission was accomplished. Stay posted for the final results of my penny table!