The Art of Cork

My dad is an avid wine connoisseur and has a number of wine cork corkboards around the house that he's made from his favorite wines. I was going through a closet in my parents' house and found two large Ziploc bags filled with wine corks. So of course, I went to Pinterest for a little bit of inspiration, and found this lovely little craft. It's so simple and unique and I knew it was something I just had to make.

What you will need:

• USED wine corks (I used about 150)
• cardboard or stiff posterboard
• scissors or Exacto-Knife
• hot glue gun

It's important to have used wine corks (yes, I know) because the natural color of the wine is stained on the bottom of the cork and that gives it a fun colorful aspect that makes it really easy to create the ombre effect. So drink up!

Making this is so easy that I could do a good job! Here are the steps:

1. Trace a heart shape on your cardboard and make sure all the dimensions are correct so it's balanced and symmetrical
2. Carefully cut out the traced heart with the Exacto-Knife.
3. Arrange the wine corks in sections of color. I had about four sections- deepest color, middle color, light color, and no color at all (the natural side, or with white wine).
4. Start at the bottom of the heart, and begin gluing with the hot glue gun whatever color section you wish to be at the bottom, either deepest color or natural color.
5. Make your way up the heart with the ombre effect of colors.

There you have it! Here are a few additional tips for making it look the best:

• Before you start you might want to spread your corks on the cardboard in a heart shape so you know you won't run out of corks and can create the right size heart.
• Glue the corks on the edge of the heart slightly over the edge so it hides the cardboard underneath.
• Don't worry if the corks don't line up exactly next to each other. Mine did not and it looks perfectly fine.

Please ask me any questions if you have any and good luck!

Listening to: Vienna by Billy Joel