When you’re an avid wine drinker like a lot of people, you may have noticed yourself saving your wine corks. Many people have a jar or container around the house where they collect their wine corks with the intention of doing something creative with them in the future.
The truth is, most of those wine corks just end up going in the garbage after a while and nothing ever gets done with them. Let’s face it, we all have incredible ideas for crafts and DIY projects that we can use the wine corks for, but then life gets in the way, and we find ourselves hoarding them until it gets out of control.
What if I told you that there are number of fun things you can do with those old wine corks that won’t take up a lot of your time? Nobody said that these projects must be done in one sitting, so sit back, crack open another bottle of wine, and let’s take a look at some fun things you can do with those old wine corks!
DIY Wine Cork Projects
Wine Cork Candles
This is by far the easiest thing you can do with your leftover wine corks, and it will stand out at your next dinner party.
Take your old wine corks and soak then in a closed mason jar filled with acetone alcohol. Keep the wine corks soaking in the alcohol for about a week and then take them out and let them fully dry out. Once they have completely dried out, place them upright inside small tealight-style glass candle holders that are slightly taller than the wine corks, then light one edge of the corks.
The corks will light like a candle and stay burning for a good amount of time providing an incredible atmosphere for your next dinner/cocktail party.
Wine Cork Stamps
While this project will be great for the kids in the end, it should be noted that an adult should help with the carving of the cork. This will require a knife and carving skills which could cause injury in children, so we recommend having an adult do the cutting and the kids do the stamping.
Using your exacto knife you’re going to want to carve out different shapes on the ends of the wine corks. These can be stars, circles, squares, letters, numbers, etc. Whatever you can handle carving will make an excellent stamp.
Once the corks have been carved into the shape you want them, dip the end into some ink or paint and then press the paint onto a piece of paper. The imprint of the shape that you carved will appear on the paper and you can use it to add a little pop to your stationary or drawings.
Decorative Lettering/Monogram
One of the biggest trends in home design in recent years is to have a large letter hanging in your home that represents your last name or initials, but those often get boring. Why not spice it up a little bit and create your own using those leftover wine corks.
You’ll first want to find a good stencil of the letter you wish to create. Using that stencil, trace it onto a piece of cardboard in the size you want. You can even use an old shipping box as you won’t be gluing anything to the cardboard itself, it’s merely a way to lay everything out properly as you glue the corks together.
You could just use the stencil itself as the guide, but sometimes they are flimsy depending on the material you’re using, which is why we recommend a piece of cardboard.
Next, you’ll want to get out your hot glue gun and start heating it up. We then recommend standing up the wine corks across the entire stencil so you can get an idea of how everything will line up. Once you have everything in place how you like it, begin to glue the corks together to fill out the shape.
If you have a nice letter backdrop that you’d like to use, you can also glue the corks straight to the board if you prefer.
This is a great way to spice up the standard monogram that you have in your house and a great edition to any wine room or basement.
Wine Cork Time Capsule
Aside from the wine cork candle we mentioned earlier, the wine cork time capsule idea may be the easiest thing you can do with your old wine corks.
Essentially all you’re doing is, when you finish a bottle of wine, write the date and occasion that the bottle was drank, on the cork, and then gather them in a glass vase. You can even throw a glass candle holder in the middle of the vase and fill up the space with the corks to give it a little more appeal.
This makes the wine corks a little more memorable as you can go back through them and see when you drank the bottle, why you drank it, and if you wanted to include who you drank it with, that would be another added layer to the memory.
There’s nothing better than sharing a great bottle of wine with good friends and family, so this is a great way to preserve those memories and be able to think back on them in the future.
What To Do With Old Wine Corks
There are quite a few different things you can do with those old wine corks that you’ve been saving, but let’s be honest, most of us aren’t going to spend the time making elaborate DIY projects out of them. These ideas above are quick and simple things you can do to give new life to the old corks while not taking up a lot of your time.