Keep Calm and Drink More Wine Cork Holder

 

A couple months ago, I found this floating around on Pinterest. It was adorable…and I immediately thought of my mother-in-law, whose birthday was coming up.

But holy price tag, Batman.

What is it you do when you can’t afford to buy something? You  make it.

I was originally going to make it just like that, but I couldn’t tell the difference between glass and plastic. I bought an extension for my power drill that looked like Hole Saw because the person at Lowe’s said it would cut through plastic… and then I attempted to cut a hole in a piece of what I assumed was plastic. It wasn’t. It shattered immediately.

So I decided that she didn’t need a hole to put the corks in…that it could just be a decorative piece, rather than an “interactive” piece. And then I came up with something I was relatively happy with.

Keep Calm and Drink More Wine Cork Holder

• a shadow box frame
• Martha Stewart Frost Etching Effect or, if you actually want it to be etched, use Armour Etch. I like the frosting effect because I can redo it if I screw up. Which I did
• acrylic paint (optional)
• corks (which you can buy)
• adhesive contact paper (or a stencil)

Step 01: I made my own stencil out of contact paper. If you bought a stencil, skip this step.

I created a text stencil in Microsoft Word.

Click for a larger size. Feel free to print and use this for your personal needs.

Then I put a piece of contact paper on a cutting board, taped it down, and taped the print over the contact paper. Using an X-Acto knife, I carefully cut out each letter.

This part took me about an hour. Worth it. Just make sure the ADHESIVE part of the contact paper is facing up…I didn’t and I wound up having to do this step twice.

ALSO! Keep the centers of the letters (like O and R). Put them somewhere safe. Somewhere organized.

Step 02: Remove the backing from the adhesive paper and lay it on the glass. Flatten it out as best as possible and make sure the area around the letters are completely flat so your etching cream doesn’t spread too much.

Step 03: Use a clean paint brushes to spread the frost etching effect over the stencil. Let each layer dry before adding another (it only needs about 5 minutes to dry). I recommend 3-5 layers. Once finished, remove the stencil. You can also add a couple drops of paint to tint the cream. I wound up doing this later when I realized the frosting couldn’t be seen with the corks behind it.

If you see any areas where the cream spread too much, you can use an X-Acto knife to gently scrape it off. If you wound up doing the whole thing wrong, you can scrape it all off. That’s the reason I bought this frosting cream instead of the etching creams with acid.

Step 04: Lay the corks down the way you want them and put the back of the shadowbox back on.

And you’re done! I used a very thin brush to go back over the frost with some paint.

As with all gifts, I won’t tell you how much it cost to make. I will say it was muuuuuuch cheaper than buying it would have been. And my mother-in-law loved it. 😀

Edit 9/25/14: My in-laws built a bar right off their new deck. It’s awesome, though it was apparently a pain for my FIL because my MIL put this cork holder right in the middle of the wall and had him build around it. 😛 Well, it turned out awesome!

I can’t wait until Zach and I can visit and see it in real life!