AIM DIY: Corked Display Box

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From 2014-2016 I chronicled my crafty endeavors on the site Adventures-in-Making. I’ve selected a few of those DIY’s, Recipes, and other posts to share on the site.

When you’re setting up a shop, or a booth for the first time, it seems like everyone has advice. What they don’t tell you about  is the agony, exhilaration, and frustration that is display.

I think that I could spend every waking hour working on display pieces in my store, and never be done– and yet, I love putting together something unique that shows off the artist’s work (and my cleverness.)

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I’d been using this stripped-down silverware box for display, but didn’t feel like if was as useful as it should be. I starting thinking about buying a piece of cork board to hang jewelry pieces from the back- then realized I was ignoring a free material right at my fingertips, those wine corks someone had been hoarding. (Just so you don’t worry about me being crushed in a pile of old newspaper and wine corks, I wasn’t the one saving them; and this project used up almost all of them.)

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I decided to line the back of the box in little slivers of cork. So I laid each cork out on a cutting board, and

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cut it into four pieces. (It’s not an exact science. I wanted the cork backing to be a little uneven, like old masonry.)

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After I had cut a whole bunch of corks, I got ready to glue.

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I used Aleene’s Tacky Glue to glue each cork sliver down, packing them in tightly to fill the space.

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At the edges, I cut the cork slivers in half to fill in where needed.
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Once I filled in the whole back, I let it dry overnight, before filling the bottom portion with dry rice. (Rice is a display staple, not just a food!)

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I pressed straight pins into the cork to hang jewelry. (I’ve found that the less fidgety a display is, the more comfortable people are using it. The pins are easier to pull earrings off of than clips.)

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One more display case down.

(The jewelry pieces seen here are from Christine Stoll jewelry, available at the So There store, and her shop ChristineStoll.com.)

6 thoughts on “AIM DIY: Corked Display Box

  1. I love the display! A perfect repurposed display for my repurposed jewelry. Now I need one of my own! Time to start drinking more wine! 🙂

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