I always keep corks from wine bottles. When I began I thought it would serve as a nice memory of the winery. However, through the years, those corks filled a container. Then filled a shoebox. These filled several shoeboxes. What do you do with your corks?

Before throwing them out, I decided to make some wine accessories with them. My first accessory was a trivet. It seemed like a simple project. I took a piece of picture frame molding and made the 45-degree angle cuts. I thought that I might use the trivet on the dinner table to place a bottle of wine on it. So I put a thin piece of plywood on the back of the trivet. Then I glued in the corks. I made several of these trivets and used them as gifts. It didn’t put a dent into the number of corks that I have accumulated.

I have seen other projects made with wine bottle corks. Bulletin boards, wreaths, model log cabins and wall designs (like a trivet but hung on a wall) are some of the many ideas of things that can be made with corks. Castel Grisch Winery in Watkins Glen, New York makes a different Christmas ornament out of corks each year. The cork ornaments can be placed on a tree or grapevine wreath.