I'm a Cork-a-holic...

I think I've mentioned before that my sweet Aunt Gem and Uncle Larry gave me a huge bag full of wine corks when they came up to visit last fall.  They figured that someone in my family could find a crafty/creative use for them, and, shockingly, it ended up being me.  (This is sort of ironic considering that I drink almost zero alcohol.)

First, I put some in a vase in the master bath.

I also put some in my new lantern, along with some vintage keys.

 And last night, I set out to make a pretty cork letters like these that I saw on Pinterest:

(image via here)

Except I didn't have a pretty wood template to work from, so mine looks a little more homemade.  About halfway through I realized that I needed to be taking some pictures so I could (for once!) do a proper tutorial, but the battery was dead on my camera, so all you get are iPhone pictures.  And, in typical Ryan fashion, I didn't take pictures of all the steps.  Oops. :)

I started by hotgluing the sides of the corks together in one straight line, using a straight edge to keep them lined up.  (They're all various lengths, so I put the end of the cork that I wanted to show facedown so I'd end up with a flat surface.  The picture above shows the backside of the corks.)  Then I added two more rows, gluing each cork to the cork next to it in line, as well as the previous row to add stability. 

Then I added the "bridge" of the H, again double-gluing for stability.

And then I made another strip of three rows and glued that row to the "bridge."  Ta-da! That's it! 

It took me about an hour, and I'm so pleased with the results.  I wasn't going to add any of the red wine corks or corks with writing on them, but I accidentally put a red wine cork in, and I loved the way that it looked, so I added more. (That's why there are fewer dark corks on the first row on the right side - that's the one I started with. :))

So if you've got any extra wine corks laying around, here's a way to put them to good use! :)