Teen's wine cork Christmas ornaments benefit West Deer Food Bank

A West Deer teen is taking a family hobby and turning it into a business.

Noah Long and his mom, Wendy, are selling Christmas ornaments they’ve made out of wine corks and are donating a portion of the proceeds to the West Deer Food Bank. They call the business Cork N’at.

“I’ve always been pretty creative, and about a year ago I painted a pair of shoes (which) started my painting and creativity,” said Noah Long, 16. “Then me and my mom found these cork ornaments on Pinterest and decided to start making them for Christmas.”

“We just enjoy making them so much,” he said. “We decided to start a business selling them.”

Long’s parents enjoy wine and even make their own. Because of that, they have lots of wine corks in their house.

The Longs started making the cork ornaments in November, going off ideas they found on Pinterest.

There are cork reindeer, cork snowmen, cork gingerbread angels, cork gnomes, googly-eyed cork owls, cork elves and cork birdhouses. Some of the ornaments are Steelers-themed.

“We just put our own twist on them,” said Long, a junior at Deer Lakes High School.

In addition to his mom, Noah Long works with his sister and his girlfriend on the ornaments. They can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.

“We got all kinds of hands on deck,” he said.

The ornaments cost between $10 and $20. They can be purchased on the Cork N’at website or in person at The Hungry Cupcake coffee and tea shop in West Deer. Ornaments sold at The Hungry Cupcake cost $12, with $2 from each of those sales going directly to the food bank.

Because the Longs are new to website design, they haven’t yet figured out how to separate the food bank donations from their online sales. For now, they’re asking people who buy ornaments online to make a separate donation to the food bank via the website. The separate donations come in amounts of $10, $25 or $50.

“People can just directly donate to the food bank and not purchase an ornament, which is fine,” Wendy Long said.

The ornaments initially were going to be given away as gifts, but the Longs decided they wanted to try to do something for the community. They always try to give back during the holidays, and the desire to do so has grown this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The coverage that we’ve seen, with the number of people in these lines for the food bank contributions, it’s really heartbreaking,” Wendy Long said. “We just want to be able support in any way that we can.”

Carol McCaskey, food bank co-chair, isn’t surprised by the Longs’ kindness. She’s known them for years.

McCaskey said the donations will allow the food bank to buy extra Christmas items for participants. The Longs had raised $300 for the food bank as of Wednesday morning.

“The Longs are a very special family,” McCaskey said.

The Longs would like to potentially expand the business from cork works to other forms of artistry, such as painting. Noah Long has been painting skeleton keys. Those can be used for various things, including jewelry.

They will continue to donate a portion of the proceeds to the food bank.

“That’s why we called it Cork N’at, because it’s not just corks. It could be other things,” Wendy Long said. “The fun thing about this is right now they’re Christmas-oriented, but we could really make them for any holiday. There’s other things that Noah’s working on that he can tie into this, and we could sell that, also.”