a champagne dream: Valentine DIY: Wine Cork Heart

Need a reason to drink more wine? Um, no. I know, you don't. I don't either. Great day? This calls for wine (happy face). Bad day? This, too, calls for wine (sad face). But how about making a super easy Valentine craft? This definitely calls for wine, and the wine cork.

Clay and I have been saving our corks for years. We were talking last night, and we guesstimate that we probably drink about a bottle of wine a week, so we literally have hundreds of corks. Some of these have got to be from our early days, making them at least ten years old. I wish I would have thought to write the date on them as we added each one to our collection; I must remember to do that from now on.

This is like the easiest craft ever. And it's fairly quick. I whipped it up last night while Clay took the kids to karate, and I was finished by the time they got home so it's definitely do-able in an hour.

You'll need something sturdy to glue your corks onto (I used cardboard from a pizza box), lots and lots of corks (I think I ended up using about 75), hot glue, and ribbon. Add some wine to make it fun. Maybe some paint, too. When I was planning this in my head, I thought I'd paint the cork tops a festive red to pink ombre, but honestly? I liked the natural result better. We drink a lot of red wine though, so many of our corks were stained deep purple to light pink already.

Cut out your heart,

then start gluing on your corks.

When doing the outline of the heart, keep the wine label on the outside; it looks great and it's fun to reminisce about all those delicious wines. Some of the labels may be upside down because you'll want to keep the destroyed part of the cork (where the corkscrew entered) from showing on your finished project. Assure any arising OCD that this is ok.