seventy four: cork + hot glue = happiness

i keep corks left over from my parents' wild wine nights, i have now saved up several hundred wine corks (over the past couple of years). i am always trying to figure out how i can use the corks as well as the other stuff i have in my crafts room. last week, i decided to cover the inside of a wine box with corks, to make a pseudo cork board for jewelry. it took me a while to cut all the corks and then to glue them, but i think the final product looks pretty good. i didn't like any of the push pins i had available, so i decided to make my own. i grabbed some mismatched beads and some old sewing needles and voila! i can't wait to start using this to keep all my earrings.
i made push pins using needles and leftover beads. i think they look really good. especially in the cork box.

fortysix: collage

i used to collage a lot when i was younger. when i lived in spain, for my last two years of high school, i collaged a large wall in my room. and while in middle school, i essentially covered all the wall space in my room with photos, drawings, and other objects. i have now graduated from collaging walls to objects. in the summer of '07 i decorated this set of drawers from ikea. i keep the drawers on my desk and enjoy looking at them.
i made this last summer from a chinese newspaper i got at a local restaurant. i spray painted the corks in the middle to create greater contrast with the newspaper. this frame was a bit of an experiment. i have found that newpaper and liquid polyurathane do not mix well (the polyurathane causes the back image of the newspaper to come through the front). to avoid the back images bleeding through i sprayed several light layers of spray polyurathane over the frame first and voila the problem was fixed. i stilled used the liquid poly to get the nice yellow finish and gloss. when the weather gets warmer i think i may make a few more frames - i picked up some arabic newspapers that i am planning to use.

ten: corks & frames

for years i have been trying to come up with a way to use old wine corks and over the weekend i finally came up with a design and idea that i really like! i got some old frames that i wasn't using, spray-painted them and then glued some cork cuttings to the back. it makes quite a nice pin board for papers or for jewelery or for whatever else you want to use it for. i think this is a great project for earth day since i am reusing frames and old cork. the one thing that is not-so-eco-friendly is the spray paint i used, but that is easy to replace.
the pictures on the frame above were taken by the very talented jhair.