Holiday Cork Wreaths

It was Christmastime last year that my mother first spotted this wreath design in the Houston Chronicle. Leave it up to my mom to scope out crafts in the newspaper. She spotted them and, knowing my love for crafting, asked if I'd make some for her book club friends for their annual Christmas extravaganza. I'm always looking for an excuse to craft- and a place to offload my crafts when I've finished, so of course I said yes.

This is the newspaper clipping that I worked off of to make these wreaths. I say "wreaths" and not just "wreath" because before this is all said and done, I'll have made about 20 of these bad boys! TWENTY! 

My mother gave her friends a heads up that she needed corks for a crafting project and the corks started pouring in. She became quite the cork collector. She even managed to purchase a big batch of them from a store going out of business. If anyone opened up the closet at my childhood home they'd think an alcoholic had taken up home in the closet. Every time I visited home my mom would let me know that her cork collection was growing and that she was ready to pass them off whenever I wanted to start crafting. Be the time she passed her cork collection off to me mid-summer, there were hundreds! 

Corks on corks on corks.

I took my first whack at making a wreath sometime this summer. I had to master the use of the Dremel that I borrowed from my dad. I started as a novice, but after drilling two holes in every single one of those damn corks I have become the drill master! The one thing I discovered when making the test wreath was that there's no way floral wire was going to hold these suckers together. I bought the thickest floral wire I could find at Hobby Lobby and the wreath wouldn't hold up or keep a circular shape. So, before I started to make the wreaths en masse, I went out and bought 18 gauge wire from Home Depot- and that definitely did the trick! 

Supplies 

tape measure or ruler

marker

22 corks/wreath

22 3/4" bells/wreath

18 gauge steel wire (I bought mine for ~$5 from Home Depot) 

pliers with wire cutters 

drill 

Directions

Use tape measure or ruler to measure 1/4 inch from the end of each cork and make a mark. Do this on both ends of the cork. While marking the corks, make sure that all are about the same size. While I was doing this project I discovered that some of the corks I had were about half an inch shorter than the rest. The wreaths will string together best when the corks are all about the same size. 

Break out the drill and drill a hole through the cork where you made each mark. Make sure you're working on a surface you don't mind getting messed up. I had a piece of pine board left over from another project that I worked on top of so I didn't have to worry about drilling through the cork and into the coffee table. 

Once you've drilled holes in all of the corks (whether it's 22 or hundreds), string them on the wire alternating with bells. Mom bought me 3/4 in bells from Hobby Lobby that came in red, white, and silver. I alternated the colors so they had some semblance of a pattern. 

When you have all 22 corks and 22 bells strung together, clip the wire with wire cutters (I used my pliers) and twist/curl the ends so the corks and bells can't fall off. It should look like this:

Then, take the wire and string it through the other hole leaving space between the corks. If you pull it tight at this point it gets difficult to string together. The straighter you can manage to keep the wire the easier it will be to pull/push through the corks. 

When the second wire is strung through the corks, clip the wire and twist/curl the end so it doesn't come out of the corks. It should look like this: 

With your pliers, hold one end of the wire that runs through the side of corks without the bells. Hold the wire firmly in one hand and hold the end cork in the other. Then, slowly pull the wire while holding the cork still. The strand of corks will begin to curl up and you'll end up with about 6-8 inches of wire pulled out. 

Prepped and ready to pull the wire out of the corks.  

About half way done pulling the wire out. It will resemble a circle more and more as you pull the wire out. 

It should look like this when you're done pulling the wire out. If you pull too much, the corks will begin to overlap. Don't fret, you can just let some of the wire loose and stretch the corks out a bit.

Wire all the way pulled out. Wreath should be circular.

Next, it's time to pull the wreath together and attach the ends. I used my pliers to connect the two ends to each other and clipped off the excess. 

My mom is a much better bow-tier than I am, so when they were all finished, she slapped a bow on each of them to give them a finishing touch! Ta-da! :) 

  Needless to say, after making so many of these I was more than happy to hand them off to my mom and leave them behind. There's no love lost between these bad boys and my fingers that drilled and strung so many corks. 

This is kind of how I felt after I was done- except replace glue and paint with corks and wire. 

Now, I just have to decide what I'm going to do with the remaining cork collection that I've got. So many more things to be made with corks!