Making a Wine Cork Birdhouse

One of my favorite crafts to make are wine cork birdhouses! They're easy to make and look amazing when finished. They are perfect for decorating or giving as gifts.

Things you're going to need are:

• Wine corks
• Hot glue gun & glue sticks
• Wooden bird house
• Razor blade knife or exacto knife
• Cutting board

The wooden birdhouses can be found at your local craft store. I usually get mine from JoAnn's because they have a pretty good variety of shapes and sizes.

The razor blade knife works best when cutting the corks in half length wise. Personally, I think cutting the corks in half makes a cleaner looking finished product because it's not as bulky as using whole corks. It is also great because you don't need as many when you cut them in half! Champagne corks also look great when mixed in with regular corks. Fake corks can have really cool designs and are much easier to cut than real corks, it just depends on what type of look you want to go for.  It is important to lay the cut pieces out on each side of the house BEFORE gluing. You will find that you need to trim some corks to make them fit neatly. Once the glue dries, it is not an easy task removing the pieces.

For the birdhouse above, I left whole corks on the sides to give it a log cabin look, but used half corks for the front to keep the bulk down. As you can see toward the top you have to trim pieces to fill in the holes, doing whatever you can to make them fit! Here is a side view of the house. 

For the roof, I cut a whole cork into about 8 circle pieces and layered them into shingles. Cutting the circles in half makes for fun decorative pieces for any left over wood that is still showing. Here are a few different style bird houses.

The smaller bird house was much more difficult than the larger ones! I thought it would be a quick project but it was harder to find corks that would fit because you don't have as much room to work with. With some time and a lot of trimming, it ended up turning out cute. Just keep in mind that the bigger ones give you more room to work with. 

Loom Knitting a Beanie Hat

Welcome to my blog! At least once a week, I am going to share loom knitting ideas, wine cork crafts and other fun and easy projects. I just recently started knitting on a loom and I have no other knitting experience. I started right before Thanksgiving, and I ended up making all of my Christmas gifts this year! I have never thought of myself as an "artsy" or overly creative person, but I have found a new hobby that I really enjoy. I have also been taking orders for friends, so I'm getting a little extra cash as well.

For this week, I want to talk about the basics of knitting on a round loom. I bought my set at Michael's for about $10 and it came in a set of four. The beautiful thing about craft stores is that there are ALWAYS coupons! I do have the Michael's and Joann's apps on my phone, but a quick Google search never hurts ( I take this into account no matter where I'm shopping). I got it 40% off at the click of a button on my phone. 

This is the round loom set:

For knitting a beanie style hat for an adult, use the orange one. (36 pegs).  Other materials that you will need include yarn, scissors, plastic knitting needle and a crochet hook. The needle and hook were included in my loom set. I think using bulky or super bulky yarn creates the nicest hats and I also think it is the easiest yarn to use.

The first step is to knot the yarn around the anchor peg. This will keep the yarn in place as you begin to knit. Take the yarn and put it through the circle so that it is inside of the loom. Starting to the left of the anchor peg, wrap the yarn around each peg clockwise. Wrap the yarn a second row until all pegs have two loops on them. It will look like this:

The most important thing is that the yarn is on the inside of loom. If it is not, you will not be able to knit for long! It will knot and get tight and you will be frustrated. Now you simply start at the peg to the right of the anchor and hook the bottom row over the top. Continue clockwise until you have one strand of yarn on the pegs again. That is your first row. Wrapping the yarn and hooking the bottom over the top until you have a few inches of rows completed. Once you have them done, pull the original loops from the bottom and re-hook them onto the pegs. Take the bottom and hook it over the top. This creates a brim for the hat, and you can experiment with different size brims. My first hat I did not make a brim, but the bottom part would continuously roll back anyways. If you don't put a brim on it, the hat will roll back! After the brim is completed, continue on with your rows. Once the knitted rows reach around 7 inches (depending on the size of the hat you want), it's about done!

To close the hat, pull about 15 inches of yarn and cut. Tie the end of it to your knitting needle. Next, take the needle and put it through the first peg, removing it from the peg. Continue on clockwise until the hat is free from the loom.

Once your hat is off the loom, pull it straight up tightening it together. There will be a hole at the top. Place the needle through the hole and turn your hat inside out. Sew back and forth a few times until the hole is gone. Knot off the yarn and trim any left over. 

Congratulations! You now have an awesome homemade hat!