Wine Cork Art!

Hi, my name is Amanda and I have a drinking problem.  OK, I like to think of it more as a "solution" to life's miseries... and of course all the celebrations like, "Hooray, it's Wednesday!" or "A Panda Express is opening in a more convenient location for us!".  We've amassed quite a collection of corks (which wasn't as massive as I was expecting, so maybe I'm not too much of a lush...) over the years and have been using my Mom's method of "store them away until one day I find the inspiration/motivation to do something with the darn things".  Back at Overlook, we threw them in a glass jar which was easy and looked OK, but hadn't really found a place for them at the Grafton (although, some do end up in a little cut crystal dish we hide in the weird square in our kitchen cabinets... or just roaming wildly in the same weird square... seriously, what did they possibly think we'd put in there??).

Ick.  It looks worse in photos.  I especially love the exposed, unfinished cabinet bottom... bleh.

Anyways, the other day, I was looking around on Pinterest (as I mentioned in my last post) for ideas on what to do with my corks.  I saw cork initials, which looked cute, but I'm not big on initial/monogram things.  Of course, trivets or making things that look like trivets and sticking them on a wall.  Loose corks in a jar (done that).  Finally, I thought, I'll incorporate the randomness of corks in a jar/vase/whatever with framed corks and throw a bunch in a shadow box.  Luckily for me, Michael's had their frames on sale for 40% off (when are they not on sale?  who do they think they are?  Kohl's?) and I found an additional 25% your entire purchase coupon on their website.  So, I picked up the cheapest shadow box I could find and a pretty sheet of scrapbook paper to use as a mat/accent for a grand total of $8.16 (not counting the numerous bottles of wine it took to harvest the corks)... I got this guy:

Which we then hung in the basement to bring our "art" grand total down there up to a whopping... two pieces.  I have dreams of that entire wall being covered in wine-themed things, but at the rate I'm moving at now, I might have five pieces up before we move out.  Oh well.  It's a bit of progress.  I don't know if I'm 100% happy with it, but if I decide to display the corks differently, all I have to do is pop open the back and dump them all out.  For now, it works.

Just ignore everything on the top of the buffet... including our decanter/cable holder and giant sponge...