Wine Cork Bulletin Board!

When we first moved to Boston 5 years ago, one of the first places we ate was John Harvard's Brew House in Cambridge.  It's a really neat brewery and restaurant in Harvard Square that has hilarious stained glass (recognize any of those guys?), good food, and the most amazing cork board I'd ever seen.  Once I saw their board (probably 4' x 6'), I knew I had to make my own (smaller) version!

Last spring, while packing for our move from Watertown to West Newton, I found the stash of corks we'd started several years before, and I caught the cork board bug again.  Once we moved in, Travis and I decided to go to Target and buy a picture frame so we could judge how close we were to filling up our board.  This is what we ended up with...

When we realized how far we were from full, we had friends start saving corks and I even hit up the Trader Joe's tasting guy a few times and got some of their corks!  Once we had more people chipping in, it came together much faster.  Here are some tips to make your own:

1)  Pick a frame you're going to fill in with the corks and take the glass out of it.  You'll be gluing the corks to the frame's back board.

2)  Start mapping out your corks!  Fill in the frame with whatever "pattern" you like - we chose alternating 2 corks vertically/horizontally.  Make sure you vary the colors, patterns and even the red dyed portions as you plot your board.

3)  Once you fill in the entire board, you'll need a really strong glue that will stick to cork.  We decided to go with Super Glue.  The "gel" super glue worked really well, and the corks aren't going ANYWHERE soon!  Pick each cork up and glue it back down (so tedious...but it only took me about an hour).  After gluing down a section, I laid a brick on top of the corks to make sure that they were touching the frame's back board while the glue dried. 

I'm really happy with how it turned out and now we're saving corks for our NEXT project!  What's your favorite thing you've seen make with wine corks?