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Hi, my name is Katie Crooks.
I'm a public programs coordinator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.
Today, I'm going to be teaching you a couple of different cork-related crafts.
"40 under 40" artist Daniel Michalik works with recycled craft as his particular material,
and these crafts today are inspired by his work in the "40 under 40: Craft Futures" show at the Renwick Gallery.
I have two examples to show you today.
I have a key chain made out of a wine cork.
I also have a placecard holder made out of three wine corks and a couple other materials.
There are a variety of different types of crafts that you can make once you get started with cork.
First, let's go with this simple keychain form.
It's really easy to get started with.
Cork is a really easy material to work with, which is really nice.
To make something like this, basically you just need a cork of any size.
I have a variety here.
You could even order balls in the shape of corks online, which are kind of fun.
I have a bunch of different just regular wine bottle corks,
but what I thought might be kind of fun for a shape would be a champagne bottle cork.
So they're a little bit bigger, they have kind of the rounded head, and then they flare out at the bottom.
The materials that you'll need, other than the cork of choice--
of course you're going to need a key ring.
Then, I have one of these little screw-based eyelets that you can get at almost any hardware store.
Basically, these three things are all you need.
I always like to have a little pile of--I call them doodads--buttons, beads, sequins, what have you, that I can decorate my things with.
For this one, I had a sparkly, little plastic gem that I glued on, so you're going to need some glue for that.
Here I just have a tacky glue, which is a good strength.
A hot glue gun would work as well.
This one I embellished with a little bit of craft wire, so that's what I have here.
It's very malleable and easy to bend, which works nicely.
If you're going to use wire, you might want some jewelry tools, such as a wire cutter or some needle-nosed pliers to help you work that.
So let's get started with this one.
First, choose which end you want the key ring to hang from, and that's which end you'll screw the eyelet into.
I kind of like it oriented like this, so I'm going to screw right in here.
Before I do that, however, to decorate it I'm going to take a bead, which I found prior to this,
and I'm going to push it through the eyelet so it's still got a good quarter of an inch of the screw part left,
so it'll still get a really good grasp on the cork.
So all you have to do if you want to do a bead is put it onto the eyelet first; otherwise, just go straight with the eyelet.
Center it as best you can on the cork, and you're going to screw it directly in.
Just kind of give it a firm push towards it while you're turning it.
I turn with both hands to kind of make the process go faster, but since the cork is such a soft material,
the eyelet will start to go in pretty quickly.
So then just keep going until you can't go any further.
It'll start to get a little harder to turn.
And there I have that part already done.
All I have to do for the rest of it is open up my keyring--I just use my fingernail.
If you're having a hard time with it, you could use a piece of wire or a letter opener.
Go ahead and put that on your eyelet, and you have a cork keychain.
I don't know if it's buoyant enough for your keys to float if you would happen to drop them in water, but there's a good chance it might work.
So that's one fun craft you can do.
Feel free to glue on buttons or gems, tie ribbons on it to decorate it further.
If you want to go ahead and make one of the these little guys, it's pretty simple.
You just need to take three corks of about the same size...
These are all recycled corks.
If you don't have any in your house, you could probably go out to a local establishment and ask if they have some.
I usually, for this--a new material you'll need is a rubber band--
I go ahead and I rubber band them together.
You can also glue them together if you're concerned about how tight they are, but if you do use glue,
make sure that your card is still going to fit.
Like this one here, only use glue at the bottom.
I'm going to use wire to bind these together because that's what I happen to have today.
However, this also works really well with ribbon, and then you can tie a decorative bow on the front.
So just go ahead, take your wire--I like to give myself a generous amount.
I usually go down towards the bottom...
Nope, I think I'm going to need a little bit more than that.
I wrap it around because I want it to come back to the front.
So when you look at it and you kind of have this triangle--so you have one on a base of two--
the front is the one.
Then bring that this way.
To make it easier to handle, I'm going to take my wire cutters.
I'm going to go ahead and snip that extra piece off so all I have is this.
I'm going to take them and I'm going to push them crossways down, and then I'm going to twist them together.
By twisting, this is also going to help tighten it up around the bottom so that the wire stays in place.
You're going to want to keep that wire pushed down to the bottom third because you need that top two-thirds to put the card in.
So that feels pretty sturdy.
To be decorative, you could swirl them into a bow shape if you want these tight ringlets like I have.
I used a pencil and I just wound it around the pencil a few times and then pulled the pencil out, which I think looks kind of fun.
To decorate, if you want to do any more than that, you can go ahead and glue something on.
Maybe, like, a sparkly gem or a button might look nice on that.
Then you end up with something like this.
That's it.
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