Corkboard Instructions

We've all seen corkboards in schools, in offices, in homes. They are made from cork, which is the bark of an oak tree. You can make your own cork board with wine corks - and both organize your papers and show your love for wine at the same time!

This is a super easy way to make your own corkboard. First, go to your favorite craft store and find a "thick" wood frame. By thick I mean that the height of the frame stands out a distance from the backboard area. In my craft store these are sold in the scrapbooking area and are meant to hold small three dimensional objects. You could probably also use a regular picture frame if it had thick sides. The important part here is that there is some "ledge" for the corks to sit on, to help support them in the frame.

Make sure the frame is large enough to be functional for your purposes. For this example I'm doing a small frame like you might hang by a door for scraps of paper, dry cleaning receipts and the like. I've put some corks in it to show you how they will fit.



The tricky part is getting your corks TO fit within the frame. Corks are not an exact, standard size. They are thick or thin, long or short. Sort through your cork pile and find corks which are all similar to each other. Here we went with corks that are all from California, to have a theme. It includes some of my favorites like David Bruce.

Now you play a Tetris like game of moving them around to figure out where they best fit. You might have to spin corks around to get them to fit in against the other corks well. If you have empty space, consider adding felt or maybe cut-up cork parts to fill those in. I was lucky in our choice of frame that the corks fit just right top to bottom. There was a slight gap on one of the sides, but not enough to worry about.



Now the gluing part. We went with Elmer's Ultimate Glue. This glue expands a bit as it settles, which means it fills in all the cracks and holds the corks very solidly. We'd already discovered this while making our trivets. You can use most other glues if you wish - anything that will reliably hold the corks in place. We put glue both beneath the corks and in between each line. We used a toothpick to smooth the in-between glue into place.

Then we put heavy books on top of the corkboard and let it sit overnight.



Voila! This is perfect for hanging in your office, your kitchen, by your front door, or anywhere else that you might need to stick notes and receipts!

Here's an example of this exact style of corkboard, that was seen during the last season of Monk. This was the episode with Sharona and Natalie together, and right behind them you can see the wine cork corkboard!



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