Can you braid? Do you have a bunch of packing paper, a hot glue gun, and a box of any kind? That’s all it took to make this really pretty decorative basket.
I’ve saved a LOT of packing paper from our delivery boxes ever since I used some to make a braided wreath (see that here), but I only ended up using about half my pile for this basket. I also had this long, narrow box made of foam and wood that I’d tried again and again to find a use for, and this was finally its time to shine! You could use literally any box that’s the shape and size you want – even a cardboard delivery box that had the packing paper with it in the first place. I did use a bunch of glue sticks, so that’s probably the most important thing to actually purchase. But I got a whole pack of them for about $8, so this is a very inexpensive project!
Supplies:
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- Lots of packing paper
- A box (cardboard or wood or whatever, in any shape you want for a basket)
- Rubber band
- Glue gun sticks
Tools:
- Hot glue gun
- Scissors
Step 1: Prep the box. Because you’ll see little bits of the box through the braided paper, it’s a good idea to start by making your box a solid base color. You could paint, use markers, or glue/tape on paper over the box. You just want to make sure you can’t see any logos or wording on the box base to start.
I had some leftover brown spray paint, so that’s what I used to give my weird box a uniform base color.
Step 2: Divide paper into even strips. I wasn’t sure exactly how much packing paper I’d need, but I started with my longest strips and spread them flat-ish, then cut them into 3 strips of equal-ish width. They don’t have to be perfect. You also can use smaller, shorter lengths of paper if you don’t have the giant strips that are wrapped around bigger packages in some deliveries.
I did this for a whole bunch of the papers, and I made sure to keep each set of 3 together. How many you’ll need just depends on the size of your box.
Step 3: Bunch the paper into rope-like strands. Using my hands, I took one strip at a time and crinkled it to be more rope-like. I also made sure to twist the paper so it stayed like this fairly tightly.
It was also during this step that I turned my glue gun on to warm up.
Step 4: Braid the paper. Once all my strips were bunched and twisted like paper ropes, I took my first set of 3 and used a rubber band to hold one end together. From there, I braided the 3 strips together, making sure to keep the braid tight but not so tight that anything ripped. If you do get little rips, it’s no big deal, and you can even glue them back together.
At the far end of the braid, I took my glue gun and glued the 3 strands of the braid together to keep the whole braid secure. I held the parts tight until the glue dried, then moved to the first end, took off the rubber band, and glued that end too.
Step 5: Glue braids to the box. Once you have all your sets of 3 braided together, you can test them out for spacing on the box. I liked my thickest one along the bottom of my box’s longest side, so I started there. I found it was easier to glue along the box where I wanted the braid to go rather than trying to glue along the lumpy braid itself. I only glued on small sections at a time to make sure the glue didn’t dry before getting the braid on, too.
It was definitely easier to start with my biggest braids to cover as much as I could first. Then I went back around and added smaller sections of braids to cover the rest of the box. Sometimes I cut one of my braids to fit where I needed to cover, so be sure to glue these cut ends if you need to do the same.
Staggering the ends of the braids definitely looked best, by the way. Tucking the end of a new braid slightly under an already-attached braid helped to hide the new ends, and it all blended together nicely that way.
For corners, I found that if I tested the position of a braid and bent it around the corner, I was then able to easily glue the box in the correct place and hold the braid around that corner while the glue dried to hold it in place.
For along the top of the box, I had a nice wide edge to work with so that I could just glue the top edge and press a braid straight down on top of it. If you’re using a regular cardboard box, this will still work because the topmost braid on your box’s side will be thick enough to glue on that as well as the thin edge of the cardboard box, and then you can press a braid on top of that to create a top side for your basket. This will hide the cardboard box’s top edge underneath that top braid. (See the picture below for a visual if this sounds confusing.)
I also had little dividers running across my long, narrow box, so I added little sections of braid across those. This made pretty cool sections within the basket. If you want to do something similar, it’d be easy to tape different boxes of the same size together, side by side, at the very beginning. You can wrap the braids around the exterior sides like it’s one bigger box to start with, but then on the interior where the boxes’ sides meet, you can cover these little sections like I did mine. (Just an option!)
You might notice from the pictures that I didn’t bother with the inside of the basket. This was because it was so narrow anyway, plus I planned to fill it with decorations. If you’re going to see the insides of your basket, you might want to add braids here too. Just keep in mind that that’ll take up space and make the interior smaller.
Attaching the braids was rather time-consuming but pretty easy. I had 2 child-sized distractions, but I got the whole basket done in about 2 hours. 😆 Once it was done, all I had left was to find a place for my new basket and fill it with decorations!
This turned out pretty cool, and I love how I’ll be able to fill it with decorations for every season. The long, narrow box I picked works great in a windowsill or as a long table centerpiece, but there are a LOT of options for how to use these baskets, just depending on what size and shape you want yours to be. A small square basket would look cute on a side table – fill it with decorations to even use it for remote controls. A really big basket could even sit in the corner of a room to use for storing blankets. Or, you could make a basket to use as a “pot” for a fake plant. I also considered weaving ribbons or strands of beads into the braids, so you could do that as a way to decorate the basket itself – I just wanted mine neutral so I could change the decorations for each season.
This project gives you so many options, and again this was pretty cheap and easy, so give it a try!
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