My Hometalk Curated Board!

Hey Friends!! Today I'm to sharing some exciting news with you! The folks over at Hometalk recently contacted me to curate an inspiration board full of DIY Wine Rack Ideas. Here's just a little taste of what I came up with. Check it out!

I am always amazed by the creativity and ingenious of others. There are some really inspiring projects out there.

Head over to my Hometalk profile to see the rest!

If you're unfamiliar with Hometalk it's kind of like Pinterest in that you can pin and create boards of projects and ideas to save for later. But Hometalk takes this a step further and allows you communicate with others on the site to discuss and swap ideas! 

So while you're over checking out some wine rack inspiration you can sign up for a profile of your own and join in the fun!

Enjoy!!

Vintage Trophy Wine Stopper

Hello All! We're back from a whirl wind vacation- we drove down from Oklahoma to Louisiana. Then over to Texas and back up again. We've been gone for almost 2 weeks visiting family one last time before Tiny Falcon #2 shows up (I'm almost 35 weeks now!!) 


It was great seeing family and friends but I'm glad to be home again. 


I have a quick and easy DIY for you today. While I was home in Houston my Mom informed me that it was really time for me to get the last of my stuff out of my room; you know since I'm 30 and all... (is it sad that I'm referring to something of my own as "vintage"?)


I've cleaned out a lot of it but some things still linger. One of those things are my old soccer trophy's. I was a big soccer player back in the day. I played from 3rd grade all the way into college. So needless to say I had a lot of old trophies hanging around. It's hard getting rid of things like that so I decided to keep one of them and thought it would be neat to make something out of it.

I had seen this article a while back which gave me my inspiration for this little project; a trophy wine stopper!

 I started by taking the trophy apart and scrounging up an old wine cork.

Since my cork was used I utilized the hole already made by the cork screw. I used a Philips Head screwdriver to deepen and widen the hole. If you use a new wine cork you may need a drill with a 1/8" drill bit to start the hole.

I wanted to make doubly sure my soccer girl stayed on the cork, so I dropped a little Gorilla Super Glue into my newly made hole and some on to the top of the cork. Then screwed the Soccer Topper on.

Done! Seriously I think it took me longer to type this post then it to do the actual project. Now I have an awesome wine stopper that will always remind me of my past and of one of my favorite activities. And it was FREE! Triple Score (or as we say in soccer speak a Hat Trick!)

How do you hold on to old memories? Did you have a hard time getting rid of all the things in your childhood room?

I was also left with the marble bases from the trophy. They are Carrara Marble so I didn't want to throw them away; need to think of something to do with them next!

From Boring to Beautiful

One thing I've been loving about our Walmart here in our new town (I know- it's a stretch to say "Love" and Walmart together but it's the only grocery store around) is the clearance section! They have a ton of stuff on clearance all the time. I've been able to stock up on toys for Con-Man's Christmas presents and a few things for around the house.


The other day I saw they had  a bunch of office supplies on clearance and I grabbed a few of these dry erase cork boards for $3 each. And I don't know about everyone else but I could really use some organization in my life.

They're ok as they are but I thought they could use some jazzing up. I've been saving more wine corks lately and decided it was time to use some more of them. I've found that sometimes when you glue the whole cork onto something they have a tendency to pop off over time. So this time I decided to slice the corks in half and glue them on that way:

Once I had sliced up a bunch of them I glued them around the frame. I finished off the rough edge with some decorative rope trim. And in no time my wipe off board went from boring to beautiful!

And since I had bought a few of them I made one of them a chalkboard instead of a wipe off board. Just a few coats of chalkboard paint did the job:

Yay! This was an easy way to update an everyday item. Which one do you like best? How do you personalize everyday items around your home?

Linking up to The CSI Project!

PVC Wine Bottle Holder

You know that saying- "Necessity is the Mother Of Invention"? Well that is totally the case here. Some might think that a wine bottle holder isn't a necessity but I beg to differ. I'm sort of a hoarder of wine- if I see it on clearance at the grocery store I'll grab a few bottles. It's a great way to try new wine and have some on hand for when company comes over.


In our old house we had a huge pantry and my wine hoarding wasn't an issue. In our new house we don't have a pantry, so my wine has been collecting underneath one of the cabinets. 

Hard to reach and difficult to find what I'm looking for.


So, enter this:

I saw this uber modern wine holder online at Umbra for $150 + shipping. Ouch. It's made of metal and pretty awesome, so I guess I understand the high price. Since buying is not an option I thought about how I could DIY this baby instead.

Hmmm, PVC pipe as a substitute? Yes!

And since I've been raving about my Dremel Tool lately this is a good tie in. I bought lengths at the hardware store. It was a little over $1 a foot. You can have them cut it down to the length you need so you won't have to buy a big giant long pipe. I used 4" and 1.5" pipe.

I used the plastic cutting bit of my Dremel to cut the pipe down further to 6" lengths, 6 of each size. You can use a mitre saw or hack saw to cut the pipe if you don't have a Dremel. Be sure to wear eye glasses and a mask- pipe dust gets everywhere!

Once I had all my pieces cut I used a sander so smooth out the edges. If you use a different kind of saw you might be able to skip this step, my edges were not completely even. Then clean all your pipes to get any dust or residue off.

After that I arranged my pipes in the pattern I wanted, looking at the original picture as a guide.

My main issue next was how to attach the pipes. There's plenty of ideas of how to attach them end to end, but side to side was a different story. I decided to use a mixture of screws and epoxy glue made for plastic. (*Note: I have recently learned that Pluming Adhesive would be best for this!) I used #8- 32 x 3/4" machine screws. We don't have a real hardware store in our town so this is the best Walmart had. They are long enough to fit through the 4" tubes where they connected and not to long on the ends where the 4" and 2" tubes connect. 

I marked the edges that needed screws then drilled 2 holes on either end 1" in from the ends. 

This was the hardest and most time consuming part. Marking each edge then drilling took some time but was successful in the end. After is was all together I used Locktite Epoxy Glue made for plastic (again all Walmart had- E6000 or another brand would work fine) and poured it into the crevices. Because the screws are attaching hard edge to hard edge, the joints were a little wobbly. The glue helped keep them in place. Next time I might try rubber washers and see how that does instead.

I let the glue cure for 24 hours, then it was time to paint! I used a white Rustoleum spray paint to cover any of the original markings on the PVC pipe and to disguise the screws.

Finito! Fini!

Now I can display our wine and not have to dig around for it in a cabinet. I'm like, a real wine connoisseur now.

For the pipe, screws, glue, and paint this whole project cost me around $20. Not bad for a modern wine rack!

How about you? Are most of you projects based on need?

Wine Cork Board

Do you have a bunch of wine corks that you've been saving and just waiting for an idea of what to do with them? Me too! My jar that I kept them in was beginning to overflow so it was time to figure something out. Plus I haven't done any crafty projects for a while and I was beginning to have withdrawals.

My idea of slicing them up didn't work to well the first time around, but this time - Success!! Check it out!

 This was pretty easy to do. To begin I pulled out my scroll saw and sliced those babies up. (If you don't have a scroll saw or other thin bladed saw Kara Paslay used an Exacto knife to slice corks for her project.)

At first I tried pushing the cork through the blade, but that seemed to take a long time and was hard on the blade. So instead I began to rotate the cork into the blade and it sliced up easily.

I didn't measure the cork sized exactly, just eyeballed them. This left me with a few odd ends but I still had more than enough to complete the frame.

The cutting didn't take very long with the saw; before I knew it I had cut all my slices and was ready to arrange them. 

I used a frame I already had and just added some white spray paint. I wanted the frame to be neutral so the texture of the cork would stand out.

To arrange the corks I used the cardboard insert that came with the frame as my backing. I arranged them the way I wanted them glued them down using Aleene's Craft Glue.

After that I let it dry and was done! Easy and fun!

I like the texture of the cork and how the varies sizes give it interest. I also left some of the brand marks right side up for some extra detail.

Not only is it decorative art- it's functional as well!

I think cork is so versatile. It's eco friendly and easy to come by. Have you ever used cork in a project? 

*Due to the large amount of spam comments have been disabled*

Trial & Error

I wish I could tell you that every DIY project that pops into my head is so easy and turns out great. Well that's not always the case, but that's ok because one of the things I love about projects and DIY'ing is the trial and error and finding new ways of doing things.


This time around I've been collecting wine corks for a while and was ready to do something with them.

A LONG time ago I made this with corks I had saved:

I wanted to try something different this time. I like the way the cork looks on the ends. I thought it would be cool to cut the corks into slices and glue them in rows and make a cork board.

First I tried cutting them with my Dremel tool. It worked on a few of them but ending up leaving burn marks on most of them.

So my first attempt hasn't worked out quite the way I thought it would. But I'm not ready to give up yet. The few cork slices that do look good are pretty cool. I want to try another method of cutting before I am ready to give up.

Do you ever have a project that doesn't go quite as planned? Has anyone ever tried to cut corks this way before that has had success? I'd love to hear about it!