Wine, a Wall, and a Problem

So I made an attempt at being crafty this weekend.  We've been searching for something to hang on a bare wall in the breakfast area.  We've stuck with pretty much a cocktail theme in that space which houses our glass racks, a counter height table, wine fridge, and our wine rack.  Perfectly appropriate for a breakfast room right?  I mean, what's breakfast without a refreshing mimosa anyway.

With the holidays approaching along with our annual Christmas party, we needed to find something for that space and the thought of a wine cork wreath came to mind.  Without a lot of time left, I ventured out into the interwebs in hopes of finding what I was looking for and sure enough, there it was....for $200!  Seriously, for wine corks?  Convinced someone must have bumped their head to want that kind of money for what surely was a simple project, I decided that this had to be something I could make myself.  Now that it's done, yes, it was definitely DIY-doable.  Would I charge $200 for one? Hell yes! It took the better part of the day to make it, not the hour or so I had envisioned when I started.  I'm really happy with the results though and below are the steps I took:

What you'll need:

• Hot glue gun
• Lots of glue sticks (I started with a bag of 100 and came close to using them all)
• Foam wreath form (I used a 16 inch form but it all depends what size wreath you want)
• Old steak knife (For cutting corks)
• Wine corks (I had 3 apothecary jars full from about 5 years of wine "tasting")
• Flat head screw
• Small circle of twine
• Newspaper to cover your workspace to prevent glue from getting on the table

I waited until the end to put the screw in the back of the wreath form for hanging, but I'd probably do it at the beginning if I did this again.  It was more difficult to handle the wreath afterward while twisting the screw into the form.  I just tied a small loop of twine, wrapped it around the head of the screw and then twisted the screw into the wreath form until it was flush.  I then dabbed a bit of hot glue around it for extra support.

With the wreath form flat on my work surface, I just started gluing the corks around the circumference of the form on the outside and then along the inside.  I just ran a stream of the hot glue along the length of the cork and then held it into place for about 10 seconds. In each instance of circling the wreath, I had a gap to fill once I got all the way around it.  This is when the old steak knife came in handy as I just cut a cork to fit to fill in that gap.  This is the base of the wreath, so it's not going to be visible once you're done.

 I used the poly corks for this step since they typically aren't as authentic looking as the actual corks

Once I had this step done, I came up over the edges of the outside and inside of the form and then applied several almost in a tire spoke position to lend support for easier stacking once I started to arrange the corks in random positions.

The corks in the spoke positions really help when you start to stack and arrange the rest of them

Next, just start randomly arranging the corks.  I did some sticking straight out, some laying sideways, diagonal, etc.  You just have to play with it.  Glue one down, then play with the next.  I strongly suggest trying different positions cork by cork before applying glue to see exactly how you want it to lay against the others.  You want to make sure that you're not leaving gaps where the wreath form shows through.

This really messed up my desire to color in the lines having to arrange everything so random!

Just keep stacking and covering the wreath all the way around.  I suggest having some hanging off the sides to break up the uniformity of the base corks that just went around the form in a line in the beginning.  Let them hang into the middle, off the outer edges, etc.  Just keep going until you're happy with how it looks or you run out of corks!

Once I had mine done and let it sit for about 30 minutes, I went back and pulled off all of those annoying little glue strings that seem to get everywhere when you're using a hot glue gun.

I had some grapes that I had intended to use to embellish my wreath, but once I held them up to it, I didn't like how they covered so many of the corks, which I think is what makes the wreath so cool.  When applying the corks, I found myself remembering some of them specifically.  You could definitely see our progression from cheap bottles of Fish Eye to Rosemount to Coppola and Simi.  In order to keep from covering them up, I opted just to cut some artificial grape vine leaves we had and just arrange them sparingly at the top.  I also just used floral picks to put them into place vs. gluing them so that if I wanted to switch things up, it would be easy to pull the leaves out and replace them with something else at some point.

About 5-6 hours later, it was done!

Goodbye empty wall!

This made a great project for a rainy Sunday.  Well worth the time and effort.  As long as you have the corks on hand, I'd say I spent probably no more than $10 in supplies between the form and the extra glue sticks.  Now, I guess we had better get started on refilling those jars with corks!