I was inspired by this awesome how to Tutorial from Love Our Real Life
If you are anything like me, when it comes to decorating for the holidays I believe in a go big or go home method. However, that does not mean I need every cheesy decoration covering the interior and exterior of my home. I try to follow two key rules when decorating for the holidays. One, decorate for the seasons not just the holiday. I don't know about you but I don’t have that kind of storage space. Two, a little personal touch goes a long way. With the invention of Pinterest, DIY projects have skyrocketed and holidays are number one. For this Do It Yourselfer I was able to combine two things I love, wine and pumpkins. These wine cork pumpkins are adorable for the fall season, easy to make and fun to collect.
Step 1: Gathering Wine Corks and Supplies
This is probably my favorite step the drinking of the wine and saving the corks. Full disclosure I did not drink all the wine that went into the collection of these wine corks, I know a guy. You can also buy them online here's a link. I hit up my local Dollar Tree for all the items I needed lucky for me they were all there. It was one-stop shopping for this girl. I will say the only thing I would change is buying a glue gun. If you don't have one just buy the glue gun. It saves so much time, these took me about three days to complete because I had to let everything dry overnight.
Step 2: Assembling the Pumpkins
The first thing i did was layout the number of corks for each row and figured out how many of each pumpkin size I wanted to do. So for a small pumpkin, it’s a 3-4-3 or 3-4-5-4-3 and so on. Super easy and once I was able to figure out the number of corks to pumpkin ratio I was able to move on to gluing the rows together. I did make sure I showed the names of the winery on the outer corks. I also mixed up the wine-stained ends with unstained for a move even and cohesive look for painting. After I assembled the rows I began to build the pumpkin shape by staking the rows upon each other. Now this is where I stopped for the day to let everything dry overnight.
Step 3: Your Inner Artist
Once the pumpkins were dry I laid them on their side and began painting. Depending on how you would like to do it, you can paint them all at once one color at a time or one pumpkin at a time with one or multiple colors. I used multiple colors but its really up to you, I have seen these pumpkins done in a variety of ways. This is where your inner artist comes out, explore different colors all orange or all white. If you are brave go outside the box and use pastels or neon colors. I want to mention I used watercolors instead of a traditional paint. I loved using the watercolors because I thought it gave the corks more of a stained look. I laid all the pumpkins out next to each other and dipped my brush into the red. I began only painting certain corks much like a paint by numbers and I used my finger a lot to rub in the color and get into the fine edges. From there I moved to the orange, purple and brown letting them dry overnight. The next day I fixed any corks I thought needed another coat. After a little dry time, I was ready to move to the next step.
Step 4: Finishing Touch
For the five pumpkins, I only needed one fall leaf bundle. I was so lucky to find an all in one, multiple colored leaf pack with different textures and a little glitter. I snipped them off the stem using kitchen scissor and started planning out how many leaves would look good with each pumpkin. Then I trimmed them up according to the pumpkin’s size, I glued them on or around the cork stem, laying them on one another for a more natural look. Again letting the pumpkins dry overnight. The next day they were ready for the final touch, a bow. I added multiple rustic colored ribbons, measured and trimmed them to length, tied a simple bow and they were ready to put out. Honestly, the hardest part of the whole project was waiting for the glue to dry overnight. But in the end, it worked out for the best, I was able to give myself breaks and work on them a little bit over the three days instead of all at once.
I really loved doing this project because it was hard to mess up. If you are not a Martha Stewart or don't have a craft arsenal this was an easy project to give you the creative time you may be looking for. I grab a glass of wine turned on my favorite Pandora station and got to work. Now I have fall decor for the next few months and I cannot wait to get started on my next holiday DIY.
