Since my mom and I live many miles apart, we don’t get to celebrate her birthday (or mine) when it actually happens. But, the next time we’re together, I know we’ll share many a bottle of wine, so I whipped up a few wine stoppers for mom for her birthday.

I grabbed these wine stoppers from one of my favorite places on earth, The Container Store. Also, I had two plastic cat toys animals from the Target $1 bin. (You know of my affinity for painting plastic animals after all.) Then, I rounded up some acrylic paints from my craft box and got to work.

I started by cutting the animals in half (oh, the horror) and painting them the same colors as my wine stops. I applied two coats of paint and then one coat of my gloss sealer to make the lil guys nice and shiny.

Then, I simply took to the hot glue gun and glued the wine stoppers inside the hollow plastic animal rear ends. I know, I’m not great at step-by-step pictures. Working on it though!

And voila. We’ve got one red rear.

And one yellow rear. Mom thought they were adorable and I think so too.

So, are you wondering where these critters’ front halves are? Not to worry, a cute tiger and lion head project is coming up soon.