Now that we’ve survived the 26.88″ of rain that fell over 4 days, I’m back!  Since the temperatures have cooled down some, I decided it was time to break out the fall decor.  Before the storms came, I had already gotten out some wine corks  and decided I wanted to make a pumpkin with them (similar to how to made the wine cork grape ornament).  When the power went out on Sunday night, the only thing I could think of to do without electricity was to start this project — so I did, by candlelight (hence the low light pictures).

Wine Cork Pumpkin

What you’ll need:

• Wine corks (~20)
• Cream paint
• Dark brown paint
• Paint brush
• Hot glue
• Raffia

First things first, figure out how big you want your pumpkin to be and the color of paint.  I decided on a shape that included 20 corks.  Since I’m not the biggest fan of orange, I opted for more of a cream color pumpkin and found the paint in my closet.

Paint the tops of all of your corks, except for one, the color you want — in my case, I painted them cream.  The painted side is the side that will be facing out, so I painted the flat side or the cork, and not the side that the corkscrew went in since those tend to be more pulled apart.  That side will face the back and no one will see it 🙂

After the tops are painted, paint the other cork dark brown, to be the stem of the pumpkin.  I didn’t have a dark brown, so mixed a lighter brown with a drop of black until I got a good color.  When painting the corks, it’s ok if some cork shows through — it makes it a little rustic (maybe?) and shows the cork it used to be.

When all of the corks are dry, start to assemble the pumpkin using hot glue to attach the corks together.  I put the corks in the shape of the pumpkin so I didn’t mess it up as I glued them on.

Slowly, but surely you’ll get the shape of a pumpkin.  Okay, here’s the key — for the top middle cork, you want to use a short one that broke off when you were uncorking, or else cut a cork in half.  Your “stem” cork will go behind it, but then you still have the pumpkin shape in front.

You can kinda tell the top middle cork is shorter in the picture below.

After the pumpkin is together, glue the “stem” cork on the top, behind the half cork.  Finally, take a piece of raffia and tie a bow around the stem –> I think Maggie is rubbing off on me with the bow!

Your wine cork pumpkin is done!

Right now my cork pumpkin is sitting out on our front table, but I may move it to another spot.  At least it looks great with the other color block pumpkins I did last year.  Happy fall!