A few weeks ago, my mom called me with a wedding present idea for a wine loving cousin that is getting married this fall…a Wine Cork Bath Mat. She asked for help making it, and as any good daughter would do, I took over and decided to make it for her. This bath mat is a little time consuming, I mean you do have to drink a lot of wine to get the corks, but so much fun.
PS. You can buy used wine corks online so you don’t really have to drink all that wine, or just use new cork stoppers.
PPS. If you know said cousin getting married, please don’t tell.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Wine Corks or Cork Stoppers (I used around 180)
- Non-Adhesive Shelf Liner
- A Sharpe Knife like an Xacto Knife
- Cutting Mat
- Hot Glue Gun and lots of Hot Glue Sticks
Directions:
I started by cutting each cork in half lengthwise with a sharp knife. While researching this craft I did read a suggestion that recommended steaming the corks for a few minutes. And I do have to say it made cutting them easier.
Next I rolled out my shelf liner and cut it to the approximate length that I wanted the bath mat to be. Then I began playing with how I wanted the corks to look. I decided on a parquet type pattern and started laying out the corks on the liner. I laid out several rows at a time to get the rows as even as possible, and tried to overlap the liner on each side about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch.
Then I heated up the glue gun and started working on gluing the corks to the top side of the liner. I traced around the outside of each cork with glue and then added a strip or two in the center, then placed the cork back into it’s desired location, and continued on down the row. As I glued I did do a little rearranging to make sure things fit just so.
I repeated pre-placing corks and gluing until the mat was my desired length. Viola!
