You’ve probably seen a million of these cork balls on the Internet — my post will be different from the others only in the lessons I learned along the way.  Saving the corks was the easy part!  I also bought a green Styrofoam ball (probably 6″ in diameter).  I used brown craft paint to cover the Styrofoam.  I only used one coat — it wasn’t a great job — but my intent was to eliminate some of the green from the original ball’s color.  Mission accomplished. 

I then started gluing the corks onto the ball using E6000 glue.  CRAP ALERT:  No luck — E6000 is not the right glue for the job.  I then tried my hot glue gun.  I spread a small area with the hot glue and quickly worked so the corks could cover the glue before it cooled.

This technique worked fine, as long as I balanced moving quickly with holding the cork long enough for it to stay upright.  Sometimes I had floppers and had to re-glue.

I tried to make sure all the wine-colored corks were interspersed with the corks that weren’t stained.  Dozens and dozens of corks later, I finally had a finished ball.

It looks good as a shelf accent, doesn’t it?