When I started making felt flower rings a few months ago, I quickly realized that I would need holders for my rings. The first thing I did was go into my art room to see what I had laying around. I stumbled upon a bag of wine corks that my cousin had sent me in my birthday package with a note saying "I figured you could do something cool with these". Finally I had the perfect project for these recycled wine corks. Everything else quickly fell into place.
Supplies
- Box that will be your ring holder. I've started carrying a wine cork in my purse to help me find boxes at garage sales and goodwill.
- Wine corks - ask family and friends to save these for you.
- Styrofoam - I hate to throw away styrofoam since it does not decompose. I have a large stash from all kinds of packaging and it's amazing how handy it can be. I don't think I could purchase styrofoam, but I'm happy to save it from landfills any chance I get.
- Toothpicks
- Dark felt
- Knife
Step 1 - Cut the styrofoam to fit inside of your box. I use the bottom of the ring box as a guide. Lightly score the styrofoam with your knife.
Once scored, it's easy to break the styrofoam in one clean motion. It's messier if you try to cut all the way through the styrofoam.
Step 2 - Continuing cutting styrofoam pieces until it fills the box to the height you'd like.
I used the first piece of styrofoam as a guide for additional pieces.
Step 3 - Cut the felt to cover the styrofoam in the box. This is purely for asthetic purposes, so you don't see the white styrofoam between the wine corks.
Step 4 - Arrange the corks how you would like them. Corks are all different sizes. It took a few minutes to arrange them so that they fit nicely together. Also, my box isn't sized to fit the corks perfectly, so I cut a few corks in half with my knife to fill the side gaps. Note: You do want a little space between each row of corks. If the cork is packed too tightly, there won't be space to fit your rings. I ended up taking the end row of half corks out, because I need more breathing room for my rings.
Step 5 - Break toothpicks in half. I did this with my fingers and I wasn't too worried if they weren't exactly perfect.
Step 6 - Insert toothpick into wine cork.Create a hole with the tip of the knife to make inserting the blunt end of the toothpick easier. Put one half of a toothpick into each cork. I looked at each cork to decide what side I wanted facing up. Then I made my hole on the opposite side of the cork.
Step 7 - Insert each toothpick, with the cork attached, through the felt and into the styrofoam. This was best done in one clean fast motion. The toothpick made a popping noise when it pieced the styrofoam. Repeat until all corks are in your holder. I started on one end, took one row of cork out at a time, added toothpicks and inserted the outer corks first - leaving the middle cork last. Be careful that your felt doesn't shift too much. On the last row, my felt had shifted a bit to expose the styrofoam. It was easy to pull the felt back into place and insert the last row of wine corks.
Step 8 - Turn the holder upside down to see if any corks fall out. They shouldn't. I do this test to make sure there aren't any corks that need to be re-adjusted.
I did the same technique of adding a half of a toothpick to the side corks I had cut in half. Placement in the box is exactly the same as the whole corks.
Step 9 - Add your rings and start using your new ring holder.
Here are a couple other ring holders I made. They can be any size or shape. The possibilites are endless. For this holder, I used two layers of corks and no styrofoam.