DIY: Wine Cork Trivets

Have you ever had something sitting around your house that you know you could put toward a better use?

The basket of corks below are all the wine corks consumed in this house since I have known Matt.  These are mostly from bottles I drank early in our relationship when I would come over to hang out and the boys were drinking whiskey. Some bottles Matt drank once I finally got him to try red wine.  A couple corks are from bottles of wine we received for our wedding.  I had a hard time imagining throwing all these away, because a.) I'm a pack rat and b.) They are somewhat sentimental.

While I feel like they looked okay in this little wire basket (thank you Mom/Southern Living at Home), I wanted to put them to a more practical use. 

So I decided to make them into trivets.  It's much better than tossing them and better than having them just sitting around.  And besides, I am always looking for things on which to set hot pots and bowls for dinner.  This project was cheap and simple.

Here is what I did:

1.  I went to A.C. Moore to buy extra hot glue gun sticks and two picture frames to start.  I found these awesome square shadowboxes on sale for $6.99 each.  

Side note: I also bought eight canvases, acrylic paint, brushes and a small easel, but that's a story for another time... :)

2.  I took the glass out of the shadow boxes.

3.  I plugged in the glue gun and began to try to figure out how these corks could fit inside the frame.  My plan was to fit all the pieces in there without glue first and then I could go back and glue them all in place.  It was proving to be more of a mission than I anticipated.  At first I just pulled the corks one by one from the basket and tried to lay a pattern.  Then I realized that they weren't all the same sizes.  I needed to really see what I was working with.  So I dumped all the corks out onto the table.

4.  After I dumped the corks out, making the patterns became easier to do.  I put the corks together like a puzzle.

5.  I went back and glued the corks into place, only removing and gluing them one or two at a time, so as to not compromise my hard work.  For each piece, I pressed down for maybe 5 seconds.  I love a hot glue gun- it dries so fast.

6.  Project complete.  Two new trivets!

Also, Ivory was a great helper...

XOXO,