cork boats ahoy!
a few months ago i inherited a huge box of wine corks from a friend who was moving. because i’m not going to decorate my home with someone else’s wine choices (though there are some great wreaths, corkboards, etc out there,) i’ve been trying to think of kid craft ideas to do with cork. when i saw this gem on jonah lisa land, via the crafty crow, i knew we had to give it a whirl.
N and i selected 15 corks from the stash to make 5 cork boats. my fox-lover was smitten with one that said “foxhollow” on it and claimed it immediately. we selected some colorful paper to use for sails, and got out my glue gun, craft sticks (toothpicks work too,) twine, eye-hooks, and driftwood/sticks. ready to create!
N got busy folding paper in half and cutting doubled triangles out for sails…
…while i hot glued corks together. (i suppose you could use other waterproof glues that are more kid-friendly, but this is what we had on hand.)
using a dollop of hot glue, i erected the craft sticks in between corks and let them dry.
then we folded the sails around the craft stick and glued them in place. (note: if you use paper like we did, it will get soggy when capsized. if that matters to you, you might want to laminate it with packaging tape or contact paper, use craft foam for sails, or use something plastic like an old plastic folder perhaps.)
we screwed teeny eye-hooks into the front of each ship and tied twine to the hook on one end and to the center of a piece of driftwood on the other end. N had fun rolling up each twine around the driftwood (a natural buoy!) that way our ships wouldn’t sail away from us — we could always hang onto them.
with our boats in a basket…
we set out with some friends to a favorite park with a great creek, perfect for wading and sailing… yet, it was all dried out! so the following day, we ventured to another park with a manmade lake with, uh, turquoise dye in it [willies] to try out our ships.
it was so quaint, simple, and fun — N was psyched that they actually floated! nevermind that the mid-lake fountain kept pushing our boats back to the shore line. no bother for these mighty cap’ns.
wishing you smooth sailing through the rest of summer!
so, what should we make with the rest of our corks?

















































