copyright 2012 Art of Living, PrimaMedia,Inc.
Editor: Elizabeth Wieck
For those of you who happen to have a copious amount of wine corks laying around, making a heart-shaped wine cork board is an easy and unique way to display your cork collection that’s an alternative to the usual trivet. It only requires a few supplies and doesn’t take too much time or skills for those who are artistically deficient.
For the prettiest and most natural results, it’s best to use wine corks that have actually been in a wine bottle with some kind of stain on the bottom. This, unfortunately, requires a large amount of wine drinking that can take a while to accumulate. The example in the picture uses more than 150 corks. Otherwise, a number of websites sell plain wine corks in bulk, which you can paint yourself in 
whatever pattern you choose.
What you will need:
- Wine corks
- Cardboard or still poster board
- Exacto-Knife (scissors will work as well)
- Hot glue gun
Directions:
- Trace a heart shape (or whatever shape you want) on your cardboard or poster. Make sure all the dimensions are correct so it’s balanced and symmetrical. The easiest way to do this is to find a large piece of newspaper, fold it in half, and trace half of a heart shape at the newspaper’s middle crease. Cut it out, and you should have a symmetrical heart shape. Trace this shape onto the cardboard.
- Carefully cut out the traced heart with the Exacto-Knife. The edges do not need to be completely exact or smooth.
- Arrange the wine corks in sections of color. You can use four sections: deepest color, middle color, light color, and no color (the natural cork color).
- Start at the bottom of the heart, and begin gluing with the hot glue gun whatever color section you wish to be at the bottom, either deepest color or natural.
- Make your way up the heart with the ombre effect of colors.
It really is as simple as that. Here are a few additional tips for making it look its best:
- Before you start, you might want to spread your corks on the cardboard in a heart shape so you know how large to make the heart. This is so you won’t run out of corks in the middle of gluing the heart.
- Glue the corks on the edge of the heart slightly over the edge of the cardboard so it hides the cardboard underneath. You can glue the corks to the side of others to help hold the edge corks on better.
- Don’t worry if the corks don’t line exactly flush up next to each other on the heart. The example did not line up perfectly and it looks fine.
Good luck with the project!
The Basic Art of Italian Cooking: DaVinci Style was selected as a featured book for the Virginia Festival of the Book this coming weekend in Charlottesville, VA.
See you on March 23 and 24th in Charlottesville, Virginia
March 23rd-Wine Made Simple- book signing and cooking demo
March 24th at 10 AM at The Happy Cook
March 24th at 4 PM at Barnes and Noble
