Christmas, Craft Projects, DIY GIFT GUIDE, Holiday, Quick and Easy Crafts, Wine Crafts

DIY GIFT GUIDE: Wine Cork Wine Charms

Wine Charms

Need quick and easy gifts to give this holiday season? Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some super simple, super affordable gift ideas — all made with things you probably already have around the house.

Today’s gift idea: Wine Cork Wine Charms

Brilliant, right? Who wouldn’t want to make a wine accessory out of something that comes in wine?!

Supplies:

  • Wine corks
  • Permanent Marker or Stamps
  • Drill
  • Hoop Earring findings
  • Jump Rings
  • Cutting tool

Steps:

  1. Using a knife, scissors, or any other cutting tool, CAREFULLY cut your cork into half-inch thick pieces. I recommend creating sets of 4 or 6, so cut enough to make as many sets as you’d like to gift.
  2. Using a permanent marker or a stamp, draw or stamp your design onto each cork sliver. It is important to note that each design should be easy to remember and different from one another. For example, I drew numbers (well, my neighbor did) on my corks. If I had stamped different scrolly patterns on each, you’d never remember whose wine was whose.
  3. Drill a hole through the top of each sliver. Test out your drill bit size on a scrap piece of cork.
  4. Put your jump ring through the hole and tighten.
  5. Attach your hoop earring finding  by looping it through the jump ring and bending the straight end into a sharp angle. This will prevent the circle on one end of the finding from sliding off of the other end and will allow it to stay on the wine glass.
  6. Fill up your wine glass, add your charms and end enjoy!

Charms

Like the idea of wine charms but don’t have a ton of extra corks around the house? Try making these other holiday themed charms.

Christmas Light Wine Charms

Holiday wine charms

Christmas Cookie Cutter Wine Charms

wine charms

Color Coded Wine Charms

wine charms cg

Jewelry

Turquoise necklace and craft night

{A Smith of All Trades} Turquoise Necklace

It had been four months since our last craft night, but last weekend my girlfriends and I finally got together again for some good food, yummy wine, fun crafting and much-needed girl time. We decided to keep it low-key and make jewelry. Since I have more beads than any one human being could possibly ever need or use, I happily hosted.

We made necklaces inspired by a Pinterest find; and although they took a while, they turned out great.

To make your own necklace you’ll need ribbon, two oversized jump rings, beads and eye pins. Simply string an individual bead onto an eye pin, then close the pin at the open end. Loop each new eye pin into the previous one, creating a chain as you go.

Once your chain is long enough, attach each end to an oversized jump rings. Do not connect your jump rings to one another.

If you want your necklace to have multiple chains, which I did, create and attach them to the existing jump rings as before. It helps to make each subsequent chain longer than the first so they hang nicely.

As a last step, add your ribbon. Loop both ends through the jump ring and back through itself on the other side (does that make any sense?).

Voila!

{A Smith of All Trades} Turquoise Necklace

So pretty 🙂

In other news, if you can call it news, I am almost finished reading my Harry Potter books. I flew through the sixth book and am about 200 pages shy of the end of the seventh. They are seriously my favorite books ever and I am already planning on when I should reread the entire series again. The point is, as soon as I’m done reading this book, I’m free! I’ll actually stop being a book worm and do something crafty! Woo!

What do I have in the works?

  • Shutters for the house — purchased, but not installed
  • New lattice enclosure for our garbage cans because ours is hideous and falling apart
  • Ripping up the rocks along our driveway so I can lay weed barrier and make it look less atrocious (Thankfully, my dad already started on this for us.)
  • Maybe doing a weed treatment to our yard because it’s abhorrent… who knows about this though
  • I still want to make an ottoman for our family room, but I need pallets again
Christmas, Craft Projects, Gift Idea, Holiday, Pallet Projects

Mini Anchor Sign

One of my really good friends love to sail and is soon to be sailing a boat in the Caribbean with her hubby — what a neat vacation idea!

I wanted to make her something for Christmas so I grabbed a leftover piece of pallet wood and brought it inside to make a sign with an anchor on it.

Pallet wood is really…. splintery. So I sanded and sanded and sanded. And when I thought I was finished, I wasn’t, so I sanded some more.

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When the wood was smooth enough to work with, I sketched an anchor onto it. It wasn’t pretty, but it was good enough.

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Nice anchor, huh? I didn’t care about the terrible sketch because I filled the entire thing with gray and black paint. Then, I wrote her last name on the sign.

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With the sign painted, I needed to drill holes big enough to pass a small rope through, so I busted out the drill and created two holes at the top.

Then, I used a water-based stain to color the wood. I’ve never used water-based stain before, but I like it a lot. The wood soaks it up right away and there is a huge variety of colors to choose from. The color I picked for the sign was Minwax’s Driftwood stain.

I only used one coat for the small sign, then I let it dry overnight.

Then next day I touched up some of the paint, mainly the black lines, and added rope and an anchor button so my friend could hang her sign.

Here’s the finished product:
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I gave her the sign yesterday and she really liked it. Yay!
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