Little Ornaments!

I was challenged by my son to find something creative to do with a bag of wine corks.  My initial thought was that they would make good trivets, laid on their side and glued to a piece of plywood, trimmed out on the sides with narrow wood.  They were not all one size, however, so they did not lie in a neat, level line that would be safe for resting hot pots or plates on the surface.  Fixing that problem meant actually dragging out a saw and miter box and doing serious work.  Serious grunge work.  I was looking for something with more gratification and less work.

Moving on, I thought about the challenge of the corks for months.  Last week I finally decided to just jump in and make a Christmas ornament with one.  It was awful.  I, however, had been challenged to make something creative, and I kept slugging away at those corks with whatever fabrics and threads I could find.  Eventually a lovely tree ornament emerged from the piles that had started forming on my worktable.  This morning I engaged C3's services to hold the cork still while I stapled a lining in place, then I began to decorate over that lining.

The result was a small box of eight wine-cork ornaments for the Adorables and their Christmas Tree.  Some of the efforts:

If I could have found my bag of foil candy wrappers, this would have been a cinch!  The ends of the corks are the hardest thing to decorate.  Sparkly paint might have worked, but cork always looks like cork, so I was trying to cover it.  Unfortunately, I could locate only one green wrapper!  Everything else was done with fabric and thread.  This is Mr. Fuzzy-Cork:

This is the Snow Queen:

These little felted guys came originally from The Container Store.  They were a little plain, so I added wings and put Ethan and Bethy's names on the tall hats . . .

And this is my interpretation of a tree that might have grown in Whoville:

Enjoy!  And Merry Christmas!