Wine Cork Mat for my Kitchen!

Notice: I did not drink all of these wine bottles. Yay this project is finally done. I have begun to collect wine corks from friends and I wanted to make a fabulous craft with them. I have seen so many Pinterest posts about fabulous wine cork crafts. I so wanted to do one! What they don't tell you is how they cut their corks in half! I learned by trial and error.

First off most knives don't work. Unless you are some professional chef with crazy sharp knives. Even then I don't know if I would condone the use of them. We tried many knives and scissors. None of them were really happening and it would have taken forever and killed my hands. Then I pulled out my electric carving knife! Oh yeah this worked! Like a charm!

Do your best to line up the blades to the center of the corks. It is really hard to get them to be even. My wonderful boyfriend cut them for me. Also here's another interesting cork factoid: not all wine corks, the synthetic ones, cut the same way. Some were way harder to cut than others. It probably has something to do with the density. Rex Goliath were really easy to cut. Some of the Australian corks-not so easy. Took more time. 

Next choose your base. I picked this rubber matting at the dollar store. I thought this would offer a good grip on the floor.

Here's another interesting cork Factoid..... not all corks are the same height. As shown here. This is going to have a huge impact with how you make your design. I learned the hard way...

I basically separated them into the 2 different heights. Then I could pick and choose which would fit better. Time to bust out the glue gun. Put a piece (or pieces in this case) of wax paper underneath everything to prevent the hot glue from sticking to the floor. Again learned this the hard way.  

Next I picked a simple design. If you would do 1 solid row or column the entire way through, it just looks weird and shows some of the inconsistencies with cork cutting, etc. So I did a box that repeated. 2 up and 2 down. Alternate. It hides my mistakes. Plus it makes a cool pattern. 

Glue glue glue! 

I actually ran out of corks and had to reorder. But I digress, I did have some gaps and I'll fix that later. 

Here is the discovery of the hot glue going through the gripper stuff and on to the linoleum. 

And here is what happens after I pulled it off, my practice try with the design got ruined... sadness

I fixed it and glued all that I could until I ran out of corks. I doubled up the material to add thickness b/c it was too thin. 

So I need a lot more, this is about 60-ish corks cut in half. Yes really! Weird huh!

So I needed more corks. And I can't drink that much wine to finish before the year is over. So I searched online and found Widget Company and they offer cheap used wine corks! Perfect and they arrive really fast. I was highly impressed with them. Will definitely use them again. It was like 20 cents a synthetic cork! Way cheaper than drinking for more corks. 

Glue to the end of the mat! Here it is! OMG i LOVE it!

Yes it is actually nice standing on my mat. It makes a great addition to my kitchen but now I want another one! Or to make more things with the leftover corks I have. I'm giddy. 

Hope you enjoyed this post and I hoped you learned something from my mistakes. And I hope you now are ready to tackle your own cork craft projects!

xoxoxo,
Lauren