You love wine. You’ve got leftover corks. It’s depressingly dark out. We’ve got the perfect DIY/online shopping solution: light up your place, and your mood, with wine cork chandeliers (and luminescence accessories). Don’t let the term “chandelier” scare you off—no spiraling staircases necessary here. It doesn’t really matter if your place is big or small. All that actually matters is that your love of wine is sufficiently big to yield a bunch of leftover corks, or purchase a bunch of repurposed leftover corks.
Cork Candle Holders
An easy way to take some wine corks and turn them into peaceful luminescence, without setting any fires.
Hanging Cork Tendrils
A bit more involved in terms of project/prep, with little votives interspersed with the cork, but the result is dramatic and romantic, a bit whimsical, kind of fit for your rustic country estate or the one we all dream about having.
Hanging Tiers
You’ll need a fan grate here, but the effect is dramatic. No light, but you can add some brightness and spring promise by twining craft store florals or grapevine around the string.
Votive Holders
Simple and pretty adorable. You can buy this style on Etsy for $20 a pair, or you can try to make your own, though you may end up spending more on wine than you’d spend on Etsy.
Tiered Chandelier
Easily one of the most involved, with a few tiers, some screws clearly needed, and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling to affix the whole thing to. But if you look at all those corks, man, the memories of some good wine…
Luigi Cork Chandelier
If you’ve got some cash to burn and you want something that looks homemade, but really, really professionally, there’s this $2000 option. Graceful, but still rustic—like Snow White trekking through the woods (with a bottle of wine, of course).
Cork Lampshade
Another online buy, and all you have to do is put the lampshade over a glowing bulb and you’ve got some nice winey warmth permeating the fall gloom.
Half DIY, Whole Awesome
This one’s fun because for $50 bucks and the cost of a lightbulb, you get to display your own corks in a pre-fab dramatic fashion. And considering you’ll be spending all that time affixing corks, when people ask “did you make it?” you can say, “Oh yes.”
