Infest the Waters: A Blog About Design, Life and Making Stuff

Ever since moving to Philadelphia in 2001, I’ve been saving corks from wine bottles.  They seemed useful, and although I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, I was sure I’d come up with something.  While visiting a friend many many years ago, I noticed that he had a lovely wreath made from wine corks similar to this one, so for a while I assumed I would make a nice wreath once I collected enough corks.

The only problem was that once I had accumulated enough corks to make a wreath, I realized that I didn’t really want or need a wreath.  Wall space is at a premium in my house between my artwork and friends’ artwork hanging on the walls, and I’m not really the kind of person who has wreaths hanging in her house year-round anyway.  So there I was, with a big bag of wine corks and no plan for what to do with them.

I took to the interwebs for inspiration, and I found numerous trivet projects.  I already have a lovely cork trivet that my aunt and uncle made for me as a housewarming gift many years ago, and I would’ve had to make dozens of trivets to use up the corks I had accumulated.  I kept looking, and I stumbled upon an interesting little project to make a bath mat over on craftynest.com.  It seemed like the perfect project–utilitarian but cute, and it required a whole lotta corks.

I decided that was a good use of the corks, so I set to work.  The only problem was that the how-to guide suggested that you cut the corks the long way by hand with a sharp pocket knife.  After attempting to cut one cork with my trusty Leatherman, I determined that (1) I valued my fingers too much, and (2) I lacked the patience to cut through a couple hundred corks by hand.  (I think the woman who wrote that post either had the patience of a saint or a serious mental disorder to cut them all by hand.  Plus, I noticed that there are no pictures of her hands after completing the project.  It’s quite possible that she only has three fingers left.)

I had almost abandoned the project when Ben suggested he could make a jig to cut the corks with a chop saw.  Sweet.  Project’s back on.

So a couple of weekends ago when we were looking for something to do (because, you know, we have trouble doing normal things, like go to a movie or see a show), Ben chopped some corks, and I started gluing.  Check out Ben getting his saw on at left.  (Oh, and don’t worry, Ben’s finger isn’t in a splint because he chopped off part of it with the saw.  He just tore a ligament–completely non-wine cork related, and kind of a huge bummer.)

Gluing is pretty mindless work, but it is pretty satisfying to use a hot glue gun.  However, eventually the boredom got to me, and I had to stop.  I finally had the chance to finish the project tonight, and I’m pretty happy with the end result (see below).  Now I have a new bath mat and I got rid of all those corks.  Let’s just hope this bath mat doesn’t wear out in the next 11 years before I’ve collected enough corks to make another one.