I then received a bunch of coupons from a lady who works at a newspaper that collects the extra inserts for me which allowed me to buy an additional 328 — which pretty much filled up the trunk of my car:

Since these needed to be refrigerated, I immediately took them to the Milpitas Food Pantry where we loaded them up into their refrigerator unit:

All together, they were worth $1039.92 which didn’t cost me a cent bringing the combined total of what readers have donated and what I have donated to $17352.25. If you would like to help out Penny Experiment, we’d love to have you participate. Not only will you be helping your local food bank, you will learn to save a significant amount on your own grocery shopping.

Tina passed the book onto Amy

Both of us have our fingers are crossed and high hopes that it will eventually make its way back to me…

We have also made some other changes including allowing anyone that wants to donate to their local food bank to add their donation to Penny Experiment even if they do not have a blog (along with a running list of all those donations). I will be going into a more detailed explanation about this change in the next couple of days. I would love to hear your thoughts on the new look.

Inspiration / About the Art: The kid’s face is a symbol that should remind people not waste their time and that money is not the ultimate goal.

Materials: Pencil, ink

Size: 5 inches x 8 inches

About the Artist: To see and learn more about Natalia’s artwork, you can explore her blog Art Bynz and on twitter @ArtByNZ.

Price: This piece is not currently for sale: There are great reasons to purchase Penny Experiment art. If you would like to purchase Dream #60 or other artwork from this 100 Penny Postcard Art series, please email me and I will put you on my list to inform when this series is for sale.

I was able to hit a couple of more stores the next day before the deal ended and picked up an additional 45 bags of nature Valley Nut Clusters and 18 bags of Wacky Mac vegetable spiral pasta worth $206.82 also for free:

The two days of purchases had a retail value of $714.70 and didn’t cost a cent. All will be added to the growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. With this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $15,839.14 worth of food for $657.06. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $984,160.86 left to go…

Upon delivering the items, Karen (the coordinator of the food bank) said that they were running low on cereal, so I said I would keep a lookout to see if I could find any deals (I buy cereal if I can find it for 90% or more off retail). This week Lucky supermarket was running a special where participating products were priced at $2.77 each. When you purchased 10 items, there was an instant $10.00 savings bringing the price down to $1.77 each. There was also a $10.00 Catalina coupon (those given with your receipt good for anything on your next purchase) when you purchased 10 items bringing the price down to $0.77 each. I had a large number of $1.00 off 2 Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats coupons which brought the price down to $0.27 per item when purchased in groups of 10, or $2.70 for each group of 10 I purchased.

On my first trip I was able to purchase 110 boxes for $29.70:

and then another 190 boxes for $51.30 on a second trip (with my nieces helping to organize the boxes)

In total I purchased 300 boxes of cereal for $81.00 with a retail value of $1347.00, a savings of 94%. All will be added to the growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. With this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $15,124.44 worth of food for $657.06. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $984,875.56 left to go…

Kraft shredded cheese (2 cups) is currently marked at $1.99 each or $9.95 for 5 packages. There currently is a Catalina coupon deal (these are the coupons that you get from the register after you pay) that is worth $5.00 toward anything on your next purchase:

So $9.95 – $5.00 = $4.95

In addition, in some stores there are Kraft shredded cheese packages that have $1.00 off 1 peelie coupons stuck on them:

Use 5 of these coupons (one for each bag) which takes off another $5.00 and the cheese is free.

The best part of this deal is that even if you choose to keep the free cheese for yourself, you will still be helping to feed the hungry. That is because for every 5 packages that you buy, Kraft is donating 5 meals to Feeding America:

I ended up buying 15 cheese packages (I always leave plent so others can do the deal as well):

For a total cost of $0.07 (I also bought 2 tomatoes which I will give to the food bank to make sure the transaction were positive), I was able to get $53.05 worth of food:

This cheese will be added to the growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. With this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $13,777.44 worth of food for $576.06. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $986,222.56 left to go…

While I had initially hoped that the coupon bloggers would be able to help me get to the final goal (they have done a fantastic job and have already done more than their fair share in helping this experiment along), the reality is that they are quite busy with their own blogging and there are a limited number of them out there so I needed to come up with a new strategy.

That new strategy is to teach anyone that wants to learn how to greatly reduce their grocery bill how I have been able to eat well on $1 a day. In doing that, they will end up getting some food for free which they may not need, and they can then pass this food onto their local food banks. Since there are far more people that want to learn how to reduce their shopping costs than coupon bloggers, I am hoping that over time we can find enough people to help out that will eventually get Penny Experiment to $1 million worth of food donated to food banks.

I do have a backlog of updates to get up (more penny art work, penny for your thought books and updates and food bank deliveries) and hopefully you will being seeing multiple posts going up beginning this weekend. I just wanted to send a quick shoutout to all that have helped thus far that all the little things have added up (over $13,000 worth of food donated!) and it has been greatly appreciated. I hope that we can do even more in the months to come.

Inspiration: The Fall of Man, Uncle Sam, America, Basketball

About the Art: Money, Man, America, Manmade Goods as Gods (It’s fairly self-explanatory)

Significance of the Number: My age at the time of the card’s creation matches the card number given to me. I placed my thumb print below the number to further emphasize this as well as ideas of manmade possessions and the ability to be tracked down and owned. Also, the number is applied to the character’s chest in a manner like a basketball jersey number, without the jersey though…the character’s action kind of resembles a basketball player, which happened by accident, but is very welcomed.

Materials: Thin cardboard, pens, markers, penny, glue, cutting blade. Sketched with pencil and used cutting blade for final drawing by peeling back a layer of cardboard on certain areas. The rubber stamp “Remove Before Use” was previously applied to the cardboard as it was once the backing used for packaging t-shirts and I worked around this to incorporate it in the art.

Size: 6 inches x 8 inches

About the Artist: Born to Missouri farmers during a late 1970s blizzard, DJG (aka: Danny J. Gibson, DJG Design, Dee Jay Gee or DJGKCMOUSA) is a critically acclaimed and prolific visual artist based in Kansas City, MO USA since 2002. Earliest influences include the apple on records by The Beatles, farming logos, sports team mascots, animals, movies, graffiti, handmade things, comic books, Jim Henson, ’80s culture and architecture. Mixing all that with a current state of context, DJG has been compared to in artistic dialogue, outlook and elusive (at times reclusive) work ethic, as well as feelings of personal kinship and spirit, to artists such as Ray Johnson, Henryk Tomaszewski, Ivan Chermayeff, Lester Beall, James Castle, Saul Steinberg, Edward Gorey, Seymour Chwast, Bill Traylor and Henry Darger…

Guided by deft eyes and hands at the respected school of design at Southwest MO State University (aka: Missouri State), DJG left studies prematurely to gather steady attention in the independent music art community for many years. Currently taking a significant step aside from music graphics to combine the present day-to-day of where the heart makes it with the gut in a constant stream of personal projects and selected commission work, DJG is simply making things in a variety of ways and enjoyment in a cramped basement beneath the heartland of America. Aside from art and intertwined within, DJG has labored as a farmhand, house painter, groundskeeper, janitor, mental health and office servant and also known to travel a bit, read and write a lot, shoot tons of photographs and watch many movies…

Honored and fortunate, DJG has received prizes, recognition, publication and exhibition internationally (North America, Europe, Asia, Eurasia…) in the visual and graphic arts, typography, writing, sculpture, film making and photography. Such notables include: Type Directors Club, Print Magazine, Step Inside Design, AIGA, Creative Grab Bag, 1,000 Music Graphics, 1,000 Supreme CDs, The Typed Image, The Anatomy of Design, The Little Book of Creativity, Pitch’s Best Posters in Kansas City, University of California at Davis, Baton Rouge Art Gallery, Sacramento Fine Arts Center, Missouri State Fair, Missouri State Capital, National Public Radio, Frankfurt Germany Book Fair, Grafik Tasarim Turkey and DPI Taiwan…

To see and learn more about DJG’s artwork, you can explore his website DJD Design, view his Flickr page and follow him on twitter @DJGKCMOUSA. You can contact DJG at djg@djgdesign.com

Price: This piece is not currently for sale: There are great reasons to purchase Penny Experiment art. If you would like to purchase The Mall of Fan #31 or other artwork from this 100 Penny Postcard Art series, please email me and I will put you on my list to inform when this series is for sale.

This is the message that Roxane sent along with the notice of the launch:

My name is Roxane Knott and I am fifth generation Australian. I was brought up in the country, close to nature and taught to respect all living things; that everyone can make a difference, to never hold onto anything and to share what you have. I believe integrity and love is everything a person should be and this is reflected in my fortunate life.

I have swum with dolphins, sharks, stingrays and seals, slept under the outback stars mustering cattle on horseback for six months of the year. I have paddled on a surf ski for seven hours to an island just to prove that I could do it and I have watched the excited faces of desert dwellers seeing the ocean for the first time. I have been to places that still amaze me and met many incredible people. In truth, my life is inspired and unbelievable and I love to write.

This book is a reflection of Australia and the generous people that inhabit this continent. Every person has history, with every page of this book and on this website; you will be able to be a part of that history. If this inspires you, you might decide to be the person to own this book thus providing valuable resources to food banks.

If this does not suit you, find a cause close to your heart, no matter how small, and help anyway simply because you can. If you do decide to purchase this book, print out the Biographies to complete the book and its history thus giving what writers want – to make a difference and leave an honorable mark on this world. Enjoy the journey.

I can’t wait to see it in person and to share the entire book when it arrives…