Wine Cork Cork Boards

How many of you have a bowl or jar of wine corks sitting around?  Well, we have had a collection going for about 5 years and I am finally doing something with them.  I have quite a few projects in the works now to repurpose my wine corks, and the first I'm going to share is two different ways to make wine cork cork boards.

Here are the supplies you'll need for either cork board:

- lots of wine corks

-unfinished wood frame (with back)

-paint or stain for the frame

-hot glue gun

-kitchen knife

The first cork board is my favorite becasue I haven't really seen anything like it out there.  I started by spray painting the frame black, followed by clear coat. 

While that was drying I started on the corks.  I knew I wanted to use the corks laid out on their ends instead of sides, so I started cutting them into 1/4" discs.  I tried a few different knives/tools to cut the corks and found that a non-serrated edge kitchen knife works the best.  Be careful, because some of the corks are harder to cut and they could slip out of your fingers.  I also like that using the corks in these discs allows me to use the champagne corks in my projects.  Those are all the slightly larger discs you see in the board.

Once I had a large pile of corks I started laying the out in a random pattern on my frame.  I mixed the real corks in with the plastic ones; and mixed in some larger champagne cork discs as well.  You'll have to work with fitting them in to get as many as you can in the space.  I also cut some of the discs in half to fill in the larger gaps.

Once I had the layout I liked I used hot glue to attach them one by one.  Be careful not to use too much glue or it will squeeze out around the cork and look sloppy.

And there you have it...a "Disc" wine cork cork board.

The second board I made is a more popular use of wine corks...and a little easier since you don't have to cut the corks.

I started with another unfinished wood frame, painted black.

I had a harder time arranging the corks for this board, and you will find that using the same length corks for each row will help you avoid large gaps.  I wanted the corks to fit as closely as possible so I fiddled with the layout a lot longer than necessary.

Once I finally found a look that I like, I again used hot glue to attach the corks to the frame.  You don't have to worry as much on this project about using too much glue, since the curve of the cork is better at hiding the glue than the flat discs.

So there you go, two quick projects to help you use up all those wine corks you've been collecting.

There will be more wine cork projects up soon...if I can find the time! :)