Pressed Pennies

Pennies from The British Transport Museum,
Warwick Castle and Birmingham Thinktank

In the unprecedented occurrence of my being bothered to write a third blog this month, I have decided to share with you one of my little quirks. I have a lot of little quirks - but this is a nice one and I felt like putting it out there in the world, and giving it some sun. Because I'm kind like that. 

I'm a bit besotted with Penny Presses. You know the things, they're in museums, theme parks and the like and you pop a penny in one slot and maybe fifty pee or a pound in another and then you slam the drawer and crank the handle and then a flattened, elongated penny stamped with a design comes out? Well, them. I love them. 


Pressed pennies are made when the penny travels through a machine called a Jeweller's Mill, which has mirror-image designs cut into steel rollers. The pennies are squashed between the rollers at immense pressure (approx. 20 tons), which presses the coin into the design and due to the immense pressure simultaneously stretches the coin into an oval shape, resulting in elongated coins and embossed prettiness.
According to the Internets, the pressed penny - or less romantically - the 'elongated coin' (sod that, I'm sticking with pressed penny) was invented in America during the 1892 -1893 World's Columbia Exposition, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's 'discovery' of America, (I'm largely unsure how you can discover a country which already has a long-standing native population but there we go). 

Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, Madame Tussauds
and The Churchill War Experience

Discovering this foxed me a little, as I'd assumed from the general quaintness and cogs aspect of them, that they were a Victorian British invention. Not that I don't think America can do quaint, mind you. It's just the general pointlessness of them, combined with the intricacy, smacks of Blighty to me. But then what do I know?

So they've been around for about 120 years or so. And they're pretty global now. On the amazing Penny Collectors website, you can see where the ones nearest to you are and also if there are any where you plan to go. If only I'd known such a thing existed...

While doing some research for this blog, I spent a good ten minutes sobbing into my tea when I realised all of the opportunities I'd missed in places I'd been, not least the two machines on the seafront, 5 minutes bloody walk from my house. That will be amended. And I've cleverly bookmarked the page, so next time I go on a mooch, I can scout out the locations and find them. I will press ALL THE PENNIES. ALL OF THEM. I will become a connoisseur, an expert in the location and art of the pressed penny. I might even start a club about it. Not that there aren't already clubs devoted to it, there are even online shops to boost your collection, Ebay does a fine line in trading them and some people even collect them in themes - like stamps! Pressedpenny.com assures me 'there is no wrong way to collect pressed pennies!'

San Francisco love on American cents
and FOTA on a 1 euro coin

I've liked them since I was a child, there was something so magical - and also a bit naughty - about sticking a penny in a machine and squashing it and putting a picture where the Queen used to be. Sometimes, you can still see her outline on them, like a little ghost. It was exciting. And exciting to turn the crank handle as hard as you could and then stand back so the blistering hot metal didn't fly out at speed and gash your knees.

I've now, as an adult, got a bit of a reputation for having a mild obsession with penny presses. I've had tweets from friends who've been away, saying 'Oh my God, Mel - they have a PENNY PRESS here! You'd love it'. Thing is though, I can't have them as souvenirs unless I've been the one to press them. Unless my lily-white hands have been the ones getting all blistered by turning the crank, it's just not the same. I need the rush of seeing the machine myself, scrabbling in my purse for the correct change, selecting the design and then cranking. I'm a cranker.

So there you have an exciting little insight into one of my passions. Next up, I'll wax lyrical on the 243 different types of cigarette ash and how to identify them       
                                                                                                          

Disneyworld, Florida

Jurassic Park ones. Yes. Made of win.

Make, Do and Mend.

Crafts. That's a thing I do now. And like all the loveliest things, it happened totally by accident. 
Toward the end of last October, I decided it would be fun and nice to hand-make my friends' Christmas presents. I decided on jewellery as it's pretty and shiny and unique and easily tailored to someone's style, taste and personality. Also, my general approach to arts and crafts is more Blue Peter than Women's Institute and at least with jewellery there's less opportunities to sling a load of glitter on something and call it art. I'm not saying you can't, but it's harder to when making jewellery. It has a kind of glamour to it that repels PVA and toilet roll tubes. 

Anyhow... So, I ordered some bits, the plan being to make earrings, necklaces and charm bracelets. I posted a pithy Facebook status about it and cracked on with making it. A few days later, I uploaded some photos, feeling very proud of myself.

My friend Laura commented, saying 'You should have a stall at the Wizarding Winter Fair. You could sell things there.'

'Ok!' said I, ordering more things to make Harry Potter themed items to sell at the fair. I made some of these up and posted photos.

Then another friend asked if they were available to buy.

'Sure!' said I, promptly going to Etsy, setting up a shop and adding my sole ten items to it. 

Do you see how it snowballed? 

I've always been kind of artsy, happy with the making and doing, sitting around making charm bracelets, rosewater perfume in jam jars etc.. When I was at junior school, I was a budding animal rights activist. I spent lunchtimes memorising the Latin names of British wildlife. One of my life-goals was to get arrested for breaking into the Proctor and Gamble animal testing labs and liberating all the animals. I had visions of me in camo, armed with bolt-cutters, brandishing them in the air as I bellowed 'Animals are people too' before being led away, triumphantly in handcuffs.

I digress.

Anyway, I used to make cakes and sell them at break time and then put the money in my Halifax account so my mum could get me a cheque to send to the WWF. Not the World Wrestling Federation, as it was then, but the World Wildlife Fund. I rapidly realised though, that all those ten pences (twenty for fancy ones with icing AND jelly diamonds on) were not going to save the whales any time soon. I needed to do more.

I'd recently learnt to knit, so I decided to employ these new-found skills in my one-girl mission of saving the planet. I spent a weekend knitting squares, to which I then stitched faces and ears and made into keyrings of various animals. These were taken around the local old people's home, where I somehow managed to convince a bunch of blind, slightly senile, octogenarians to part with their pensions for them (fifty pence a pop. I was raking it in. Cha-ching!).

The game was on. Arts and crafts as a way to make money was go. It was heavily aided and abetted by my Nana, who is solely responsible for my love of making stuff. When I was little and used to stay over with her, we'd to spend hours cutting up bits of net curtain and sewing ribbon to it before stuffing it with lavender from her garden. She taught me how to make dolls house furniture from conkers and dolls from clothes-pegs. She taught me how to make clay out of flour and water and salt. She bought me ribbons and glue and paints and pencils and encouraged me to sit and make things. And she loved everything I made.


She broke her arm once and I knitted her this (with hindsight, utterly repulsive) cover for her cast. It was a slime-green frog, with a massive pink tongue and boggly-eyes made from my old gym knickers. Best of all, I lovingly made a fly to sit on its tongue. And she actually liked it. She really, really did. She wore it over the cast and when that came off, it spent the rest of its life sitting on the back of her chair. When she died, I insisted she was buried with it. 

I used to make cards, more than anything else. She always encouraged me to sell them, telling me to take them to shops and see if they'd sell them on. I never thought they were good enough though, so I used to say I preferred to do it for the people I loved. I was right, they weren't very good, not compared to what I do now. But I think she'd be pretty proud of me for finally doing something with all the arty stuff.

Where was I? Right, Etsy shop. So I set one up, added stock, people bought it.

What is this fuckery?

I made more things, got a bit creative. Then people started adding my items to their 'favourites', including them in Treasury Lists. I made a Facebook page to keep people updated on what I was doing. I found a local craft fair to go to. And after that, people started emailing me to ask me if I'd be interested in selling at their fairs.

As of right now, I have four craft fairs coming up in the next four months. My Etsy shop, after having stock in it for almost 5 months, has had 92 sales. It doesn't sound like a lot, and I'm certainly not about to start looking for property in Highgate, but it's a big deal to me. That I make these things and people like them, people want them, is so incredibly brilliant.

I used to sit and read my Ebay feedback if I was feeling a bit low, you know, the stuff like 'A-Star, Excellent Ebayer!' Or 'Perfect, 10 out of 10, come back again soon!'

Now I look at all the things I've made that other people have seen value in too, and I make more of them. It's a lot healthier, I think.

This post came about because last night, I decided to join Tumblr. Not because I desperately want to spend 4 hours a day sharing GIFS with the world, but because it's dawned on me that marketing is kind of essential to keeping this flow of awesome steady. And a lot of the stuff I make, though not all, is inspired by books and films and television. And if there is anything Tumblr knows about, it's what the fandoms are up to. So it seemed like a natural progression. I'll add photos and links to my Etsy shop, tag it appropriately and hopefully drive traffic, from people who might be interested in my stuff, to the shop. It's part marketing tool and part showcase of my hobbies.

And I won't lie, I will reblog pictures of foxes, teacups and narwhals if I see them.

At the moment, I'm in a very complicated relationship with my sewing machine. There are lots of things I want to start making, lace collars and cuffs, detachable Peter Pan collars, bow-ties and garters, that all necessitate, for sanity's sake, being able to use the machine. Except it scares the shit out of me. I may have to employ my usual tactic of getting drunk and having a go on it to break the ice.

It's exciting though, making things. I get so much pleasure from having bits and bobs and putting them together and making new things. I don't know how big it will get, or how big I want it to get. I'm worried all the joy might be sucked out of it if I end up spending all my time trying to keep up with orders, or relying on it as my main income. But for now, it's one of the loveliest parts of my life.

The Making of Harry Potter

It's been an action-packed few weeks. Lots has been done and lots is to come. Firstly... I SAW FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE!

I'm a bit in lesbians with Flo. By a bit, I mean COMPLETELY, UTTERLY AND IRREVOCABLY.

She has the most amazing voice, style and panache. She's beautiful. 'No light, No light' from her second album, Ceremonials, is the most perfect song in my world at the moment. Since buying the album on October 31st, iTunes informs me I've now listened to it 403 times... Reasonable until I explain that I don't listen to my iPod every day. Usually when I'm travelling. So the 3.8 plays daily average is a lot scarier than it first seems. Still, it keeps me happy.

Pris and I went to see her in Brum, meeting up with Fran, Kirsty and Beth there. We had to drink our wine out of plastic pint glasses but I did get to buy a tea-cup and she played 'No light, No light,' as her second-to-last song and I did some happy tears and it was perfect. 

After Flo and some much needed fun-times with Pris, I headed home for a few hours to repack a suitcase before heading off to Surrey for a night, followed by a road trip to The Wirral to celebrate Ellie's birthday. It was pure bliss to have so many of my favourite people together in one place, last time it happened was Florida last July, so this was a rare treat. Though I'm hoping it doesn't stay a treat and we get to do it more, so much so that I start to take those beautiful people for granted.


Last week saw me, SophieSoph and Kat venturing into the past (and there actually was a TARDIS, no joke) and going to experience life in the Blitz, at the Winston Churchill War Museum by London Bridge. Soph and I are native City of Villains kids, so we're quite WW2 savvy, popping a gasmask on and scooting under a table when the air-raid siren goes off is all in a days work for us. We followed up Victory by seeking out crushing defeat, heading to the casino. I popped my complimentary £10 chip on the roulette wheel... And lost. So we got cake and went to the pub.


A couple of days later, I was awake at 5.30am... Because finally, after almost 5 months of waiting, it was time to go to Leavesden to The Making of Harry Potter at Leavesden Studios.


The point of this isn't to give you a step-by-step guide to it, as I'm hoping you'll eventually go and see for yourself just how amazing it is. But if you're a fan of the world of Hazza P, you'll love it.


Most of all though, I think it's a beautiful standing tribute to the people we never got to see on screen. So often, we focus on the actors and their performances, occasionally bashing directorial decisions or script changes, but we fail to appreciate the other miracles happening on screen. Thousands and thousands of props were created for the series, hours spent designing and painting things which, at best, might only be seen on screen for a split second. 

Actual chocolate

Since visiting Leavesden, I've realised that for every complaint I've made about the films, I should have been making three compliments, making a note of objects in the background, or how realistic a puppet was. I'm really excited to watch them all again now, to better appreciate the costumes and the detail that was added to them. Hours and hours spent covering phone books in leather, embossing letters, adding labels to bottles for when a camera pans past them swiftly. Things which were made, like Lily's letter to Sirius, but never included. The chocolate feast, some items made from real chocolate. The hundreds and hundreds of little touches, that make the Harry Potter series really magical. 

We won't be crashing into the Whomping Willow
and that's why our insurance is lower.

At the same time as discovering things you've never seen before, you can't look anywhere without seeing something you recognise. By the end of the day, my stomach ached from all the pangs I had when I saw something I knew. Big things, like the door to the Chamber of Secrets, the Knight Bus, the basilisk skeleton. Small things, like Umbridge's amazing cat brooch, Scabior's scarf, Luna's Dirigible Plum earrings. It was a trip down memory lane...

Not to be confused with the actual trip down memory lane that is Diagon Alley. It genuinely bought tears to my eyes and not just because I'm an insanely sappy fangirl. 

But because it's so real. Despite numerous reminders that we were on sound stages, it didn't click until we'd left and were on the red carpet watching the actors go back inside. Then I remembered that I hadn't just been to Hogwarts, or Diagon Alley, but to a workplace, where the cream of the British film industry spent ten years making miracles. 

I'm so excited to go back, I've booked to go again on 31st July, for Harry and JK Rowling's birthdays. And, best of all, because we were rushed from the gift shop at the end, WB have very generously comped us free tickets to go back! I would urge all Harry Potter fans to go, it is expensive but it's so worth it. And they have Butterbeer. Actual Butterbeer. It was beautiful.


I know there's stuff I didn't see there, stuff I need to see again, stuff I want to spend hours staring at. At the moment, the exhibit will be there until 2013, when it may be expanded to include more things, or removed to make Leavesden operational again. Go, before that happens. You won't regret it. It's one of two places in the world where you can step inside a book. And that's kind of all nerds want.