Wine corks.
A ton of 'em.
If you've seen the wine label collage I've done, you know that we really love wine. And with a ton of wine labels, comes a ton of wine corks.
I've saved all the wine corks in hopes that someday I'll find some inspiration to use them in some capacity, but for now they just fill up our vases and glass bowls as decoration.
This weekend I decided to use just a handful of them to add a little character to our bar tray. If you recall, I repurposed these wine bottles into glass-etched liquor bottles:
I decided that black tray on our black chest looked a little bland. So, to further tie in the wine theme we've got going, I decided to add some wine corks. Initially, I lined them up along the inside rim like so:
The only problem with this method is that the bottoms of corks are not perfectly flat, so they all kept falling over.
So I grabbed my glue gun!
Now, I didn't want this to be a permanent addition to the tray, so I just wanted to glue them together in order so that they could stand, but not glue them directly to the tray itself. My first thought was to glue them all together. However, as I started to glue, I realized that the longer I made the wall of corks, the more likely it would be to break. Hot glue worked well but because corks are so smooth, it wouldn't be too difficult to break the wall of corks. That's why I decided to just do rows of 5-6 corks each. These rows had enough reinforcement from the 5-6 in order to stay standing, but weren't so long that they would break apart.
I also decided to do some corks with the red wine-stained side up, sporadically to give them a little more charm.
Then I lined the four pieces of wine corks up in a row at the back of the wine tray, and they look great!
They stand up just fine, and provide a nice backdrop for the liquor bottles on the black tray. And best of all, they continue the wine theme without being over-the-top!
I spy Bogle.
ReplyDeleteYou know how to make wine drinkers happy. I always wanted to make a wine cork trivet or like a wine cork art box thing...
I need to take a vacation so I can do all these crafts and cook.
Very cute idea!!!
ReplyDeletesimple n cute!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! The wine stain variations make me swoon. We collect too many corks and, since I hate throwing them away, it's a struggle to do fun things with them (besides displaying them in a jar). Have you seen my cork heart I made a couple weeks ago? http://decoratingdiy.blogspot.com/2011/04/cork-aholic.html
ReplyDeleteKristen
Turning a House into a Home
Super cute! I'm going to be following your blog. Love the wine projects! Here's one that I did:
ReplyDeletehttp://viv-spot.blogspot.com/2011/04/wine-cork-artwork-tutorial.html
I love your etched bottles too!
Love it! I've been using them as top bedding in my gardens but now I'll do something different.
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking to ShabbyNest so that I was able to find you.
Your photography is lovely.
ReplyDeleteJust stopped by from the SITS page; I found my own project to try one of these days. It was in a magazine (can't remember which one at the Dentist's office); using a large shadow box and the corks inside to make a bath "mat." It looked so cute, I immediately thought I should add to my collection of corks to make sure I had enough when I do attempt this!
ReplyDeleteGreat blog!