With the holidays in full swing, chances are you and your loved ones have opened a bottle of wine (or four). Dealing with the bottles is fairly easy; they can be recycled. But what do you do with the wine corks? We asked around and found these great new uses for corks. And they make easy homemade gifts for the wine lovers at the office!
Flickr photo by Sam Howzit
CORK WREATH
You can make a decorative holiday wreath out of wine corks. Just arrange them in a circle and keep stacking them, alternating the direction. All you need is a hot glue gun to keep them in place, and you can make the wreath as big or as small as you want, depending on your size preference and how many corks you have available.
CORK BOARD
You can literally make a cork board! This is a great way to reuse those picture frames that have cracked or are missing glass panes. Arrange the corks in the frame in an easily repeated pattern. Once you figure that part out, just hot glue them in place. This serves as a place to pin photos or notes in your home office or kitchen.
FLOOR MAT
Fine Craft Guild shows us how simple it is to make a floor mat out of corks. This is a cool-looking accessory plus it's really useful by your front door or in your mudroom for keeping your dirty or damp shoes off the floor.
HOT PLATE
It turns out that corks are very heat resistant. Similar to the steps for making a cork board with a picture frame, you can make a hot plate so your casserole dish won't burn your table cloth. Just follow those instructions, but use a smaller picture frame.
KIDS TOYS
You can make cute little toys using wine corks as the base! Lucy Ravenscar has instructions on how you can crochet little outfits for them, making an army of cork knights! If crocheting isn't your thing, you can also dress and decorate the corks with felt and some marker doodling. This is a fun activity you can do with the children in your life.
To see all of these 5 uses for cork in action (and check out our previous installments of Chris Barnes' "5 Uses For...") click through the slideshow below.
5 New Uses For Everything
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