If you've got a drawer full of coins from old travels — the ones too small in value to exchange but too interesting to throw away — this short tutorial shows what I do with mine. I sew them into little acetate pockets and use them as charms on my junk journal spines: hung from tassels, clipped to eyelets, dangling from the covers. The process is simple enough that I walk through it in a single sitting without any prepared demo, and it uses scraps you almost certainly already have on hand.
What we cover
Making coin charms from old foreign coins and acetate scraps — sewing a see-through pocket on a sewing machine, slipping the coin in, finishing with an eyelet, and attaching the charm to a journal spine or tassel. I also talk through which coins to choose and why acetate from library book covers or cereal box liners works so well.
What you'll learn
How to choose the right coins for this project — I look for two things: thickness and size. A coin that's too thick stops the sewing machine foot from sitting flat, which makes stitching around the edges difficult. A coin that's too large gives you an unwieldy charm. I mostly reach for smaller, flatter foreign coins — Italian, French, Croatian, American cents — the kind that have been sitting in a drawer for years with nowhere to go.
Which acetate works and why — The material needs to be see-through (so the coin is visible) but not so thick it's hard to sew through. My favourites are the clear covers from old library books — I've saved a stack of them from books that were headed for the incinerator. Cereal box liners work too, and so does the plastic from school uniform packaging. If it's clear and you can feed it through a sewing machine, it'll do the job.
How to cut and prepare the acetate strip — I don't cut a precise square and then try to fit the coin into it. Instead, I cut a loose strip, hold the coin against it to get a feel for the spacing I want (a little room below, a bit more above for the eyelet and attachment), then set the coin aside. Working without the coin in place makes the whole sewing step much easier.
How to sew the pocket, including:
- Sew down one long side, pivot and sew across the bottom, pivot and sew up the other long side — three sides closed, one open
- Stop with the needle still in the fabric before removing from the machine
- Slip the coin into the open end using a pointy tool — the machine foot holds everything in place while you ease it in
- Sew across the final side to close the pocket
How to finish the charm — trim the acetate close to the stitching on all sides, clip the corners, then set an eyelet at the top. A jump ring or bobby pin through the eyelet gives you something to hang it from.
How to use coin charms on a journal — I mostly attach them to the spine: hanging off tassels, clipped through eyelets, or looped onto cover closures. Even a single charm adds a nice bit of weight and movement to a journal, and the clear pocket means the coin itself is always on show — you can read the date, the country, the design.
How to use a basic sewing machine across mixed materials — I get a lot of questions about sewing acetate, cardboard, and paper on a home machine. Mine is the cheapest one I could find in Australia and I've used it every day for three years on fabric, paper, acetate, and cardboard without treating it preciously. The only time I changed the needle was after sewing through something genuinely thick. For this kind of craft work, you don't need a special machine.
Tips & gotchas
Coin thickness matters more than you'd expect. If the coin is too chunky, the sewing machine foot won't lie flat on both sides of it while you're stitching the pocket closed, and your seam will wobble or skip. Test the coin against the foot before you commit — flatter is better.
Sew the three sides first, then insert the coin. It sounds obvious, but I've seen people try to sew around a coin that's already sitting in the acetate. It shifts, the stitching goes uneven, and you lose the clean edge. Leave the coin out until you've got three sides sewn and the needle is still parked in the fabric — then use a pointy tool to ease it into the pocket. The foot holds everything in place while you work.
Size the charm to the coin, not the other way around. Leave a little breathing room — a few millimetres of acetate beyond the coin on each side — so the stitching line isn't right against the edge of the coin. This also leaves you enough material to trim evenly after sewing.
With thick acetate, go slow. The library book covers I use are thin enough to feed through easily. If your acetate feels stiff or rubbery, slow the machine down and guide the material gently — it can slip sideways if you rush it.
The eyelet needs a clear gap at the top. When you're sizing your strip, leave a noticeably larger margin above the coin than below. That's where your eyelet goes, and if you cut too close to the stitching there's no room to set it cleanly.
The coin version is what got me started, but the same pocket-sewing method works with any small flat object you'd want to show off through acetate — a tiny vintage postage stamp, a pressed flower, a fragment of old map. The technique is really just a way of framing something small and making it portable, wearable, attachable to whatever you're currently binding.
