Hanging Plant Basket Makeover

Indoor plants don’t do well in my care, but I like the pop of green that a hanging fake plant adds to my bathroom…I just didn’t like staring up at the black plastic basket hanging over my tub. This week, I finally got around to giving the basket a makeover, and it looks way better now.

This little project was basically macrame for a lazy person who didn’t want to actually follow a pattern, and since I didn’t want to see the basket/pot at all, my full wrap job did the trick without actually needing to know what I was doing. Plus, if you’ve already got a hanging basket and hot glue gun, this only costs like $5 for the string.

Step 1: Prep the basket. As an optional part of your prep, you might want to paint your basket if it’s a dark color and you don’t want to see any of it through the wrapped string. I thought of this after I was done wrapping the basket, and I do like the contrast of seeing the black through the white string to give it a little dimension and depth. But if you want it to look more like a solid wrap job, paint the basket first so your base is the same color as the string.

Before you start, you’ll want to remove the connected fasteners and hook part that hangs the basket. I think most hanging baskets usually have 3 of these ends that go up to the hook, and I cut off the fasteners to use for my new part that would hang the basket. More on those in a minute.

Step 2: Wrap the whole basket. With my string ready, I added a spot of hot glue to the very center of the basket’s underside, and I stuck the end of the string there. Then, going around and around from this center, I added dabs of glue to hold the string tightly in place as I circled around the bottom to cover it.

NOT cutting the string, I moved up the basket from the bottom/underside and continued to wrap the string around and around the basket’s sides. I added more glue then I’d planned, so this took a bit of time, but I wanted the string to stay as tight as possible to hide the black basket decently. This was a lot of going around and around. When I reached the top of the basket’s main section, I cut the string and glued the end down tight.

If it doesn’t look covered to your satisfaction, you could always go around a second or even third time, if you have enough string. I was satisfied with one layer. You also could make one long braid and wrap that around and around, but that seemed like more braiding than I wanted to do – but it would look nice.

Step 3: Braid 3 equally long braids for hanging the basket. These will be used to hang the basket from the 3 fasteners, and they run down the sides to tie under the basket and make it look like they hold the basket too. I measured…sort of…by stretching my arms wide and cutting each strand of string to that length. You’ll need 9 equal strands, 3 for each of the 3 braids.

After tying 3 strands together at one end, I braided them together and then tied the other end. I did this to make 3 braids of the same size.

Step 4: Wrap and connect the fasteners for the hanging braids, then tie the braids. Using my string again, I tied on an end to a fastener and wrapped it around until all the plastic was pretty well covered, then tied it off again and added a spot of glue to help. I did this for all 3 fasteners.

Then I took my finished braids and found the middle of each, and that was where I stuck on my fastener before snapping the fastener back in place onto the basket. I then tied a knot over the top of the fastener where it stuck up a bit, just to cover the plastic end. Again, I did this for all 3.

Once they were on, I took one end of each braid and tied these together, making sure they were equally long so the basket would hang straight.

For the other end of the braid (the other half that wasn’t tied above), I made sure all 3 strands hung evenly to the underside of the basket and then tied them together in a knot right at the center of the basket’s underside. Once this knot was tied and secure, I undid each braid’s tied end and unbraided them so the strings hung more like tassels from the bottom of the basket.

That gives you the look of the basket hanging from a little braided holder.

Step 5: Add thicker braids along the top and bottom of the basket. Once the fasteners and braided hangers were on, I wanted a thicker braid around the top edge. This again took 9 arm-length strands of string, but this time I tied them all together and braided using groups of 3 strands for each section. This made a thicker braid and was actually easier on my fingers. 😆

Taking one tied end of this bigger braid, I glued it just over the inside of the basket, then glued it around the basket’s top to cover the edge AND cover the fasteners. I ended up doing 2 laps around the top to completely cover the top of the basket.

For the bottom, I again cut 9 strands, but these only needed to be about half as long because the bottom of my basket was narrower and I didn’t need to do 2 laps around. Rather than securing a knotted end, I took the end of my thick braid and squeezed hot glue into the strands to secure them together. Then I ran it OVER the three hanger braids and glued it all the way around the bottom of the pot. When I got back to my starting point, I cut the end and again squeezed glue right into the braid’s end to hold it together without a knot, then glued it in place.

Step 6: Add decorative braids. With the base wrapped, hanger braids on, top braid on, bottom braid on – all that was left was adding some decorative braids around the pot. I did a few thick and a few thin, and I glued them all over in loops around the pot, making sure to run them under the 3 hanger braids where they ran down the sides. (I just thought that looked better.)

When my hands were sick of braiding, I was done! Putting my fake plant back in the basket, I hung it over my tub again, and it looks so much nicer now.

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