DIY Wine Cork Pumpkins

Temps are finally cooling down and the autumnal season is upon us. We stole a few minutes with Lucy in the Makerspace at Richland Library Main for a quick tutorial on creating these super-cute, super-simple wine cork pumpkins. Here's what you'll need to get started. 

Materials:

• 25 recycled wine corks
• Orange acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• Hot glue gun
• Craft knife
• Green felt
• Scissors
• Jute twine

Instructions:

1. Arrange the corks in rows (4 on the bottom then 5, then 6, then 5 and 4 on the top) and hot glue together. For best results, try to match up the corks so they’re the same length in each row.
2. Dilute the paint with a bit of water and paint both ends of all but one cork. Allow to dry.
3. Take the one remaining cork and cut off part of it with the craft knife. Hot glue it on top as the stem.
4. Cut leaf shapes from the green felt and hot glue them on around the “stem.”
5. Tie a short length of twine around the stem to resemble the vine.

Voilà! It's that simple. Want to spice it up a bit? Create multiple pumpkins of varying sizes to really give your centerpiece some dimension or cut a small slit in the top of your stem cork to create a place card holder for each guest at your festive gatherings.