Turn An Old Wine Cork Into A Miniature Decorative Birdhouse

Fairy gardens (and all things miniature) are having their time in the spotlight right now, leading some tiny-lovin' tinkerers to create sweet accessories for said minis. Miniature kits are not for these crafters: Instead, you'll see them digging through their piles of artsy stuff, looking for items like used wine corks and scraps of cardboard to repurpose. And while these DIY materials could be remade into just about anything, the cutest items turned out by these artisans are decorative faux birdhouses, which have the potential to dress up a fairy garden like nobody's business.

In the regular-sized world, some of the most charming DIY birdhouses are made of hollowed-out logs. This miniature fairy garden idea evokes the same look, thanks to the wine corks' cylindrical shape. Repurposed pieces of scrap cardboard top the tiny birdhouses, creating roofs, which are further decorated with the likes of pine cones, moss, and twigs. Twine or cotton give the wine cork birdhouses a swingy handle, allowing you to hang the tiny houses from garden flagpoles or low-hanging forsythia or lilac branches in the garden. All you'll need for this DIY project is a black permanent marker, a hot glue gun, a pair of scissors, an ice pick, a ruler, and a pencil.

Any corks will work for this DIY, but there's something to be said for using the stoppers that used to sit inside bottles of red wine. The stain from the liquid adds hints of color to the cork. Given that the staining may appear uneven, the body of your miniature birdhouse will take on the appearance of wood that has been aged unevenly by the effects of sunlight and weather. 

While you wait for the corks to air out, make a roof for each birdhouse. Using the corks as a size guide, draw a long rectangle on a scrap of cardboard and cut it out: This will be folded in half to create the roof's peak. Keep in mind as you draw that the cardboard needs to be long enough to create an overhang on each side of the cork. Give it some extra width for the same reason. 

As an alternative to a plain cardboard roof, use the tops of pine cones or acorn caps to make roofs for your mini birdhouses. The acorn caps work especially well for this because they'll sit on top of the cork like a hat. Alternatively, you could try using Super Z Wood Gift Tags as shingles instead. Glue them onto a strip of folded cardboard, one tag on each side of the fold, to reinforce the shape of the peak before gluing the roof onto the cork.

Natural adornments like moss or twigs give your mini birdhouses a wilder vibe; you can glue these onto the roof as well as the sides and bottom of the house. To create a perch, bore a hole in the front of the tiny house with an ice pick, just below where you'll place the door. Stick a small twig into the hole, making sure to reinforce it with glue. Then, draw the front door just above the perch with a marker.

Run a string under the apex of the roof and tie it at the top. This becomes the hanger for your birdhouse. Or, go the opposite route and give the tiny house a post to stand on, which you can create using cocktail sticks or skewers. Use the ice pick to make a pilot hole in the bottom of the birdhouse and insert a skewer into the opening. You could even use this style of miniature birdhouse to decorate a fairy garden in a plant pot. 

Other details can give your decorative mini birdhouse some additional appeal — such as a tail constructed of beads strung onto twine or a strip of leather. Attach a small bell to the bottom of the beaded string, then hang a group of these types of birdhouses on a tree branch to make sweet wine cork chimes that sing when the breeze picks up.