What Can You Do With Wine Corks?

I live in an area that has lots of local wineries, which is a really wonderful. Out-of-town guests who visit me know that we will spend a day touring the wineries when they visit, and they don’t seem to mind that. There’s something really wonderful about sampling different wines, and then getting a cold bottle of the best one to drink on the deck. Sometimes the wineries have local bands playing, which makes things even nicer.

The abundance of good local wine, however, means that I have a giant pile of corks. Do you save your corks? If you do, what do you do with them? I have some kits to make cork boards, but I haven’t started that project yet. I’ve also turned them into ornaments. I did a little internet research, and turns out there’s a lot of creative things you can do with wine corks. Here are a few fun possibilities:

Craft Chi shows us how to use wine corks as stamps.
All Things Christmas has some simple directions for turning corks into ornaments. I used these instructions to turn corks from a girls’ weekend into mementos for the women who were there. These can be used as tree ornaments, hung from something else, or could even be a decoration to hang around the neck of a wine bottle.
This website has a huge pile of ideas for what to do with your corks. Some of my favorites: use the corks as “soil” for growing orchids and making a cork wall.
There’s also lots of directions out there for cork boards, wreaths, and trivets.

And if you just want to jump to the finished result, check out The Crafty Wino on Etsy. They have this clever Corky Message Board, as well as some other cool wine accessories.

And while it technically doesn’t count as a cork-using craft, the wine bottle stoppers at Pink Polka Dot Poodle are so pretty, you should check them out anyway. You may need a fancy bottle stopper if you get overzealous about crafting with corks.