Upcycling rulls :)

There are so many creative ideas for the upcycling of different materials. Frankly, i seem to becoming a huge fan of the entire upcycling idea, not only for the environmental reasons, but because it makes me think creative and learn from others' creativity. I believe that the entire upcycling concept could be used with any given age group and it a wonderful and fun way to bring people to higher level of environmental thinking.
One of the coolest materials to upcycle is wine corks. They look cute and nice, there are cool slogans on them sometimes, the material is a good absorbent and feels really nice to touch.
Couple of years ago i created a cork frame for a small collection of matches from all other the world. The initial idea was to find a solution for the matches. But in the process it become more like cool arts and crafts project. I loved it a lot and my friends did too. I cut the corks lengthwise and glued them to a piece of cardboard. All the matches are pined to the board, so if needed, the exposition could be changed to anything else. Here is my corks board.

There are many other cool ideas of what could be done with the wine corks and i am thinking of trying some of them. Check these out (via http://sustainablog.org/):


1. Bath mat - corks make wonderful mats. The main thing they say is to use hot glue and not superglue so that the adhesive won't wash away. And it should be waterproof so you need to close the gaps between the corks. By the way, many pubs or restaurants will be happy to get rid of corks (for those of you who dont drink much wine at home).



2. Wine corks could be used for the indoor gardening. You can build a flower pot with them or you can put them on the bottom of your vegetable pot to help oxygenate and mosutrize the soil for plant health. In this case its better to cut the corks breadthways.




You can use corks as a nice plants markers. 
Or you can even make a tiny flower pot from corks.

3. Flash driver holder. Here you have to be very careful while removing the center of the cork. You can wash and dry a bottle and keep your flash in the bottle after you make it. It looks special on your table, makes you look a "struggling writer" :)



4. Birds house. This one is a wonderful architect's work and amazing implementation. Respect to the craftsman for this one indeed.




5. And the last one is the craziest one :) Its an armchair! A real one. If you had lots of free time and plenty of wine corks, would you try this at home?

What do you think of those? What are your ideas for the corks upcycling?
Feel free to share,  its interesting and its fun.