How To Make Wine Cork Keychains

Looking for a way to recycle wine corks? These simple DIY wine cork keychains will turn your collection of corks into useful accessories. It’s a fun craft project that can be done in a variety of designs.

I have been saving my wine corks for quite a while now thinking I might be able to do something crafty with them.  Many of them have been sitting in a glass vase, on display, which looks pretty cool on its own.  However, it was time for me to start thinning out my supply. These DIY wine cork keychains seemed like a logical way to do that. When you have a lot of wine corks, it’s fun to create several keychain designs to keep for yourself or give away as gifts.

How To Design A Wine Cork Keychain

I like to use beads in my craft designs whenever I can so I thought it would be fun to come up with something that would incorporate beads as well. Because there is such a variety of beads and charms, it’s easy to personalize your keychains for the use intended. These also make great gift items that can be customized to the personality of the recipient.

It doesn’t take long to do this craft and it is a lot of fun.  You can add as many beads and charms as you want to personalize the chain to your liking. I only used charms on this first one to keep it a little more simple.

Barefoot wines have the cutest corks! Because I wanted to design a keychain for keeping in a beach bag, I used the barefoot corks for these. A shell bead along with beads in coastal colors complete the look.

You’ll find that some wine corks have a different texture than regular cork. This one has kind of a rubbery feel. It is still easy to work with. In fact, it tends to grip the parts pretty well even before glue.

No matter what type of design that you choose, the basic instructions are all the same. There are some key parts and then whatever charms, beads, or ribbon that appeal to you. I’ll show you the basic steps then you can have fun accessorizing from there.

I also made wine cork keychains as wedding favors. For these, I used screw eyes and one simple charm for a quick and easy design. When you need to make several keychains for party favors, this is a great way to go.

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Supplies Needed:

• wine corks
• E6000 craft glue
• beading eye pins or small screw eyes
• charms
• beads
• ball chains or split rings
• beading jump rings
• beading elastic or wire

Tools:

• small flat nose pliers
• round needle nose pliers
• wire snips
• tweezers

Wine Cork Keychain Craft Instructions:

1. With your wire snips, cut each eye pin to about a half inch long.  Dip each straight end into some E6000 craft glue and then insert the pin into the center end of the cork until it butts with the round eye.  Do this for the top and bottom Another option is to use small screw eyes. These are a little more expensive but they screw into the cork very easily.

2. Now attach a jump ring to the eye of each pin. Just pry open the ring at the seam and then feed it through the eye pin loop. Then, close the ring back up with a pliers. Now you are ready to attach your charm, beads and keychain.

You can see that the charm end will easily attach to the jump ring.  You will need to use your pliers to open up the jump ring and then press it shut again once the charm is in place.  At the bottom of the charm, if there is another ring attached, you can simply add a strand or two of beads right from the charm.  Just string them on your beading elastic and tie them on.

You can also just add a strand of beads to the jump ring using beading wire.

Use a fairly long piece of beading wire and wrap one end around the jump ring.  I reinforce this with a little dab of beading glue as well.  Then, just start adding your beads with a dot of glue between each bead to hold them in place.  When you get to the end, just twist the wire around your round nose pliers for a decorative end.

Another option is to paint the wine corks for a brighter look. For an example, see my post on making a floating keychain. I used a champagne cork, paint, and twine for this craft.