Cork Christmas Tree

I've got another Christmas craft for you today!  Now, I've mentioned in the past that I have a huge stash of unused corks in my arsenal thanks to my winemaker brother-in-law.  From time to time, I come up with ways to use them and am starting to incorporate them in my holiday decor.

First, I laid the corks out in a tree shape.  I just kept tweaking until I got the sizing that I wanted.

Then, I hot-glued and glued and glued and glued and glued all of the corks together, keeping the shape of the tree that I had laid out.

Feeling like it was too plain, I decided to add some color with craft paint.  I felt that using just the green paint was a bit much.  So, I watered it down to give a "white wash" effect.  Once I had several of them painted, I just wiped the excess with a paper towel.  You can see the difference between the top green row and the three green rows below it - the top row was freshly painted prior to wiping the excess watered-down-paint off and the bottom three rows were wiped down.  I like how you can see the texture of the cork through the washed out color.

The very top cork was painted a washed out yellow for the "star".  And since I didn't have any brown, I just left the trunk in it's natural cork.

And if I ever feel like I need a change, I can just flip it around for just the plain cork look.

I know I'm getting an early start on Christmas - anyone else out there getting an early start?

Originally posted by Adventures in DIY