Cork Garland

Cork Garland
This is my most favorite craft because it means there was wine involved at some point! So after collecting a giant container full of corks, I could either start making some cute cork crafts or build a cork boat. I have THAT many. I’ll be making some cork ornaments with the kids soon, so I decided to start on my garland now as kids would NOT like this one.  Here’s why…

You’ll need:

A ridiculous amount of cork

A strong 2-1/2″ embroidery needle

Ribbon or embroidery thread (any color!)   The thread or ribbon will be as long as you’d like your garland.

Paint if you would like to paint a few corks to disperse among the regular corks.

Putting the needle through a cork is a challenge. It’s funny because I could look at the wine maker’s name on the cork and say, “Hey, I remember this wine. It was expensive.” That expensive wine cork was typically very dense and super hard to get through. The cheaper wines usually had corks where the needle went through easily. So, in this case, cheap wine wins.

Put the threaded needle in the cork and then flip it over to put your weight on the outside edges of the cork . Force the bottom of the needle down on a hard surface  (pointy side is up in the cork). Use a hard surface like a kitchen counter that won’t scratch – not your wood table! Be careful, you don’t want to impale yourself. This is not an activity that you want to be watching T.V., or get distracted. This is why cork garland making is not for kids either.

I do recommend putting the hole through as I did in the picture. If you try and go end-to-end, you’ll break your wrist. This project is not for the weak!

The end result is very cool and well worth the effort. Remember you only need to make enough garland to wrap around the visual parts of your Christmas tree. Why make garland for ‘behind the tree’. Right?

Alternative ways of linking:

If you really want end to end links, you could use metal eye-hooks. Screw an eye-hook in each end and then you can attached the metal loops with metal rings, ribbon, whatever. This is probably the easiest pay to make an end-to-end chain, however I didn’t want metal on mine.


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