Make a Coaster From Old Wine Bottle Corks

I made this for an upcycling task as part of my teacher training course (a Design Technology related component) and thought I'd post it here too.

This Instructable only outlines the steps to make a single coaster, but could be extended for placemats too.

Things I used:

Old wine bottle corks
Self-Adhesive felt
Piece of cardboard
Stanley knife

Step 1: Slicing the Cork

As the picture illustrates, I took a cork and sliced it up into cross-sections using a Stanly knife - a sawing motion with gentle pressure produced best results (I tried a cigar cutter but this didn't prove very accurate). For mine I chose a thickness of approximately 5mm. Cut to this thickness, you may need around 2 corks to produce 1 coaster - my finished one contains 19 cross section pieces.

Step 2: Sizing Up

I laid out my cross-section pieces to roughly the size of a mug - making allowances for bigger mugs. Considering the shape of the cross-section pieces, when laid out they form a hexagon shape. With this in mind I made up a hexagon template from some cardboard of a size that when laid over will touch all the cross-section pieces yet leave around 5mm gap from the edge for neatness (the step 4 picture illustrates what I mean by this).

Step 3: Cutting the Felt

I took a piece of felt - drew around the cardboard hexagon onto the sticky back backing and cut this out.

Step 4: Sticking Together

I arranged the cork cross-section pieces to the desired shape on my mat, then peeled away the skicky covering part (whatever this is called) then offered the felt to the cork pieces (being careful about positioning) then pressed firm to stick.