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

Christmas, Craft Projects, Holiday, Quick and Easy Crafts, Wine Crafts

Wine cork grape ornaments

I think this craft is one of my all-time favorites. My neighbor and I did a craft night before my Trash to treasure fair and we made so many cool things out of corks!

Unfortunately, I only have photos of the finished project. It’s hard to remember to take photos when you are crafting with one of your best friends. It’s basically non-stop talking mixed with singing along to Christmas music.

Anyway, check these out!IMG_0020

To make a wine cork grape ornament, you will need 8 wine-stained corks, a thin piece of cork, wire, hot glue, ribbon and a leaf!

First, you will need to cut the tops of your corks off. We used sharp knives from my kitchen to cut through the cork. Err, correction, Allie used the sharp knives… I couldn’t stand the noise it made. Either way, cut about half an inch from the wine stained end. We didn’t care if ours we all the same length because the different sizes gave the ornament a nice depth to it. (Can an ornament have depth?)

IMG_0021

Once the cork tops were sliced off, I arranged them on a flat piece of cork that Allie got from TJ Maxx. It’s super thin and was meant to be a placemat. It worked great for this project, but you could use really anything to glue the corks onto. Cardboard, maybe.

Once the corks were arranged in a grape shape, we traced around them and cut out the cork. Then, we glued the leaf at the top (from a fake flower) and proceeded to glue each grape onto the cork.

IMG_0022

When the glue dried, I poked wire through the cork and made a hidden loop behind the leaf. Then I strung my ribbon through the top and hung it on our holiday garland!

I absolutely love these ornaments and will definitely be gifting a few this holiday season.

 

Life

Busy. Busy. Busy.

Hello blog,

I have not forgotten about you, although I haven’t posted in a few days. It’s been busy around our house with a lot of non-blog worthy stuff, and the next two weeks don’t look like they will be any slower. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day — my favorite holiday! Yay! Then Monday is my birthday. Double yay — well for me anyway. Double trouble for the hubby. He’ll manage though. We have lots of celebrations planned, including a Valentine’s Dinner tomorrow night, dinner with family on Saturday, birthday dinner No. 1 on Sunday, birthday dinner No. 2 on Monday, followed by Monday Night Trivia, and then a fondue birthday celebration on the following Saturday. I am full just thinking about it!

I consider my birthday celebrations officially started with the receiving of my first gift last night…. from Marlboro Cigarettes. Yes, you heard right. I get presents from Marlboro. Let’s clear up a few things: 1. I don’t smoke. 2. I’ve never smoked anything in my life. 3. I never plan on smoking anything in my life. To answer the obvious questions — why the heck is Marlboro sending you a birthday gift  — well, I haven’t a freakin’ clue! I somehow ended up on their mailing list and they like to send me gifts. In the past I got a sweet bottle opener that attaches to a bar. Too bad I donated it before we got our house and our bar. Such is life.

I know, I know… you are dying to know what they could have possible sent, right? Well, this little box arrived at my mom’s place last night. She texted me to tell me she thought maybe Marlboro was sending me free samples of cigarettes. That idea in itself was absurd, so I told her to open it and find out.

Marlboro Swag

Check out my AWESOME birthday gift.  Yes, that’s right. Yours truly just got some SWEET AVIATORS from a cigarette company. Randommmmm.

Marlboro Swag

I’ve got some bad news for Marlboro (who will likely remove me from their list should they ever stumble upon this post): those are sweet aviators and I will TOTALLY be rocking them this summer, but I am still not gonna pick up smoking. I’ve got enough bad habits as it is. Good try though! Maybe I’ll buy a candy cigarette and fake smoke in my aviators just for effect… but that still seems unlikely.

In other news, we are oober close to replacing some of the doors in our house. We are aiming to replace our front and car port doors probably in March and I cannot wait!!! My stepdad is going to help us with the install so I actually get to learn what the heck it takes to put a new door in. Sweeeeeet. The hubby has already warned me we will likely scuff up some of our walls and that I need to prepare myself. Good thing he did because it would and will totally stress me out.

In other other news, we started a trivia team with my neighbors and a few friends this past Monday night and we won Third Place on our first go at it! Go us.

OK, OK. Enough rambling. Happy Wednesday.