Challenge x2! Wine Cork Heart!

A good challenge is apparently the only thing that gets me to write a new blog!  Luckily I've been wanting to make a wine cork heart for awhile and I had two challenges to enter with my completed project!  (Also, I was determined to complete it in time for Valentine's Day!

Challenge 1: Upcyclers' Creativity Challenge!  One of my faves, of course.  Last time I entered was back in September, here.  This entry is for the January/February challenge, as described by The Wooden Bee: "The medium is.... WINE CORKS! :) I bet many of you are not surprised. I am a HUGE wine cork upcycler. Champagne corks, synthetic corks, or any cork material will be expected!!!"  Check out our team here and the pinterest board for all entries here.

Challenge 2: Pinstrosiversary Challenge!  Pinstrosity is an awesome blog - kind of like snopes for pinterest.  Or maybe mythbusters for pinterest.  People send in stories problems that they have with pinned projects and the authors often make comments or try to help figure out what went wrong and if it's even possible to make it right.  Very entertaining!  I wish I could be friends with the two girls that run it.  They are coming up on the first anniversary of their blog and decided to do something fun: "We've been putting our heads together to try and figure out just what we wanted to do in celebration of the "big day". We're always encouraging you to get out there and to actually do what you have pinned...so we thought we'd give you extra incentive. How about this...you actually do something you have pinned and that enters you in a drawing for a cool prize? I like that idea. Don't you?"  Why YES, I do!  Check out the full description and all entries here.
So, I'm double-dipping on the challenge entries!  Here we go:

The inspiration: Ombre Cork Heart

So, first I had to collect corks.  Lots and lots of corks.  A few people helped save them for me and luckily I have a few people in my life who love wine.  So, I was pretty positive I had enough corks, and again, I wanted to get this done in time.  I cut out a heart out of thin wood in the shop - it took a few tries to get the right size and I was still short a few corks.  That's when I broke an upcyclers' rule: I used some new corks.  My boyfriend's lovely father bottles wine as a hobby and supplied me with some corks.  I justified it by remembering that I needed some plain ones for the top (lightest ombre shade) of the heart.  Another issue was that I didn't have nearly enough of the wine-stained corks.  Obviously I drink too much white wine.  So I used some food coloring to give them more color.  However, they turned out a little bright-ish, so I toned them down with a brown stamp pad.  The gluing wasn't too bad - I used a tacky wood glue which worked great and is holding up awesome so far!  Here are some pictures of my process:

Fake wine-staining the corks.

 

Making it look a little more realistic with a stamp pad.

Oops - out of focus.  But I just globbed some tacky wood glue on the bottom
and where it would be touching the other corks.  Very scientific.

 

I had to trim some down with a razor blade so they would lay flat.

Getting started with my dark-red section.

 

And here it is!  The first thing I see as I come up the stairs into my house!

Close up of my favorite cork in the bunch!  A campagne cork from a bottle
of Dom Perignon - my boyfriend and I won this from our "Locals Card"
from our favorite pizza place!  We cashed it in on the day we closed on
our house. <3

Not quite the same ombre effect as the original, but I still love it!

Whoops, forgot to rotate this one.  So cool of me.  Cork heart love.