My neighbor and I had a few wine corks laying around and thought it’d be fun to complete an art and craft project with them. It was Christmas time, so we thought it’d be fun to make a Christmas tree with wine corks. Even if you haven’t been saving the wine corks, now would be a good time to start!
When saving wine corks, it’s always fun to save ones that have writing on them. But you can also write on them yourselves. I typically write down the occasion and year on ours. Another thing to keep in mind, is that wine corks that are solely cork and don’t have the soft exterior or are the spongy kind work best, look the best as well, and are the easiest to paint.
To complete a wine cork Christmas tree, you need about 30 wine corks. So, you might have some time to be able to plan this! Let’s review what other material you’ll need too.
Supplies:
- Approximately 30 wine corks (you could always make a smaller tree too)
- Hot glue gun
- Hot glue
- Paint (we used acrylic paint)
- Paint brushes
- Wood star
Step One—Pick out the wine corks that you’d like to use and arrange them in a tree pattern. When doing so think of the orientation. I tried to place wine corks with fun sayings or if you have personalized ones with those on the outside or the front of the “tree trunk”.
Step Two—Heat up the hot glue gun and glue the wine corks together, starting with the top of the tree and working your way down. The hardest part is gluing the trunk in place. The mass of the top of the tree is heavy on the trunk and hard for it to stabilize without the trunk glued just right. Great thing about hot glue, especially in this scenario is that if it doesn’t go as planned you can peal the glue off and start again (typically).
Step Three—Once the glue dries, you’re ready to paint! We used acrylic paint and had to use both sides of the paint brush (the brush and the small tip) to achieve our desired looks, since the wine cork surface are so small.
Figure out which side would work best as the front. Then we came up with different designs that you like and attempted to paint a different design on each wine cork. While, still leaving some plain or with plain paint to not be over stimulating on the eyes.
I wish I would’ve ordered some acrylic paint pens in time to be able to easily do the small details on the wine corks. I really underestimated how challenging painting on wine corks would be due to their small size.
Step Four—To finish ours off we bought plain wood stars and painted them yellow. We added them to the top of our tree with hot glue.
Some More Ideas
Idea 1: One of the easiest ways to create a Christmas wine cork art piece is by using a tree template. Simply print out a tree template or draw one yourself, and then use push pins to attach the corks to the template. You can make different types of trees by varying the colors and sizes of the corks.
Idea 2: Another easy option is to create a wreath out of wine corks. Again, you can use a template for this or freehand it. Start by attaching several corks together in a circular shape with hot glue, then continue adding more rows until you have reached your desired thickness. You can then paint the wine cork wreath, or not. Once the wreath has dried, you can add bows or other decorations as desired.
Idea 3: If you want to get really creative, you could turn your Christmas wine cork art into a garland. You can find templates online or freehand them yourself to create whatever shapes you want for this project. Once you have cut out the templates, glue them together using hot glue so that they form a long strip about one foot wide by five feet long (or whatever size fits best on your wall). Then use push pins or another adhesive method to attach each end of the garland onto adjacent walls in your home.
Hope you enjoyed this wine cork art project! It’s fun and you might just have all the supplies laying around already. If you enjoyed this project, you may also want to check out another wine cork art project of a fall tree I made with my toddler. We used the wine corks as stamps to create leaves and it was easy and enjoyable for all. Happy crafting!