Crafty's Corner

So I've started to get a little crafty again.  Summer of 2010 I got rid of all the craft projects I had started, but never finished.  I've been collecting cork for years in hopes of doing somethings with them one day.  The internet can be a wonderful and dangerous place to anyone who is looking for a "simple" project.

Sit back for a sidebar story.....Some of my corks went to an unnamed friend's 30th birthday present.  I made him a cork board out of the corks.  My pinky and ring fingers went numb for 12 hours because I sawed each cork in half so they would lay properly inside the frame.  Two years later, I am enlightened to the fact that my birthday present never made the car ride home and ended up in a friend's garage which was later placed in the trash when this friend with the garage moved.  It is not the worst thing in the world he has done, but let's just say it ranks in his top 5. 

I've never been quite happy about the cork wreaths that I see until I cam across this one on Pinterest (otherwise known as my new obsession). Scroll down to the middle.  She has a lot of other great wreath ideas.

If you think about making this one, I offer the following tips:

• It's going to take a lot of corks. From the picture below, you will see that I ran out.
• Figure out how you want to mount the wreath before starting the endeavor.  I ran wire through the foam and then wrapped it around the wreath.   From there I looped some ribbon to the back of the wire in order to hang the wreath.
• Champagne corks work nicely too.
• I'm not confident that the toothpicks are going to stay in long term and some may require some glue.
• And yes, my hands are sore from jamming toothpicks into cork, but again, I think it was totally worth it.

UPDATE 1-18-12:  Thanks to my friend Nicole, I was given enough corks to finish out the wreath.  I think it came out better than I had expected!