{diy} the many uses of wine corks

i love finding or creating new uses for everyday products. i mean, it's pretty much the theme of my pinterest account- and everyone else's. the one item that i feel has a ridiculous amount of roles is the infamous wine cork. i pretty much save every wine cork i ever come across, mainly as glass fillers. but what to do when you're faced with a random situation and a need for decorative pushpin? a wine cork pushpin, of course. duh.

so a few years ago, mama riner and i traveled across the country for a girls' weekend in the san francisco bay area and wine country. what more can you ask for? it was an amazing trip filled with fun walks around the city, great food, and an amazing wine tour.

now one thing you will learn about me is that i love souvenirs. i'm not talking about t-shirts and figurines. i prefer to go the art or local route. i try to either pick up something that is unique to the area (got some amazing hand-painted chopsticks in sf's chinatown) or an art book/hand-painted art (recently got a great pencil sketch of a local church in new orleans). so while in sonoma, mom and i came across a really cool wine country map poster that included all of the vineyards we visited- for $12. score.

i waited about a year to frame it until i moved into my new condo. here's the thing- because it's a random shape, i couldn't find any pre-fab frames available anywhere. so the next logical approach was to get a quote from the local a.c. moore store. $500?!?! ridiculous for a $12 poster. that's when i started thinking outside of the box and came up with the solution: a cork board. here's the final result:

now to secure the poster to the board, i looked into all sorts of options. then my inner-diy-er came up with creating wine cork pushpins. so super simple and it definitely finishes it off while complimenting the piece.

all you really do it take a cork, figure out what drill bit is the a tad bit smaller than the actual pushpin for a snug fit, drill into the cork carefully, and then push the pin into place. love love love.

time to start thinking outside of the box for your own diy projects. ;-)

xoxo Lauren