Eight Easy Steps to a New Easter Basket

Store-bought Easter baskets are too frequently like store-bought Halloween costumes. Cheaply made. Called consumables, they are intended to be used a few hours and tossed in a landfill so you have to buy a new one next year. I didn’t want one of those pastel plastic things when my son was little, and Easter pastels wasn’t really our style so here’s what I came up with.

I found the little bunny decoration on a piece of fabric in my stash. He was a handsome little fellow and was a perfect match for the Wedgwood blue craft paint I had on hand. This was more than a few years ago when we painted everything Wedgwood blue. The green border on the top matched the little bunny trousers and pulled the design together nicely.

I filled the basket with some leftover excelsior packing material. This basket is on the small side, but it was big enough for a couple of toddler Easters. Then it became a table decoration for a year or so. Now it’s a cherished family heirloom.  Or at least it will be someday. I’m not sure how long it takes for a cherished object to become an heirloom.

So if you haven’t already purchased Easter baskets this year, or even if you have, it’s not too late to do your own thing. If you’re a frequent crafter, you may have everything you need on hand. If not, the materials are not hard to come by.

1. Get a basket.

If you’re a basketeer—meaning someone who can’t resist buying cute baskets even when you don’t need one—you may have a basket on hand. If not, clip a coupon and head to the nearest craft store. Or forget the coupon and go thrifting. Thrift stores are an excellent source of baskets. Look for one with a body deep enough to hold a batch of goodies. Be sure the basket is intact and the handle isn’t going to fall off. After all, these are second-hand and may have had a rough past life.  But if you find the perfect shape, a few broken twigs shouldn’t be a deal breaker. If the construction is sound, any apparent distress will vanish with a new coat of paint.

I found these baskets at the Salvation Army store for 49 cents each. It was a Wednesday and everything was half price. I can’t imagine why that purty pastel basket was still there for just a dollar. Just goes to show some people don’t know the power of a can of spray paint. 🙂

2. Paint the baskets

Have your theme in mind (see #3) when you choose the paint. I don’t remember which came first, the paint or the theme, but I had yellow spray paint on hand so that’s what I used. Craft paint with a brush or sponge applicator also works. I had a redbud tree in the backyard that had suffered some ice damage, which left some notches just right for painting baskets.

3. Choose a theme.

You might go traditional with Easter bunnies, chicks, and eggs. But you can also choose something your child is in love with. Kids always have a favorite thing. Maybe cars, monsters, dinosaurs, teddy bears, unicorns, mermaids, trolls, literally, the sky’s the limit. You can find the stars and the solar system if you want.  There are all kinds of subjects on novelty prints these days, and there is a wide variety of licensed character fabric available too. LIcensed fabric is more expensive, but you won’t need much.

Be aware the latest thing sometimes takes awhile to get in stores, and the most popular thing sells fast. Have more than one thing in mind so you aren’t disappointed if the one thing you want isn’t on the shelf right now.

For these baskets I went with a spring theme. I had fabrics with bugs, flowers, and butterflies in my stash.  If you have to buy something, and you aren’t a fabric shopper you should know fabric is sold by the yard but you don’t have to buy a whole yard. In many stores you can buy as little as a few inches.  Lay out the fabric and buy enough to get the whole pattern you want to cut out. A quarter of a yard will be oodles.

4. Fussy cut the pieces

Fussy cut is a quilters term for cutting out shapes to feature an object or pattern on the fabric.  I made a garden basket and a bug basket. so I cut out flowers, butterflies, and bugs.

You don’t have to cut right on the lines, just curve around the general shape of the objects. If you need to get into the nooks and crannies of the design, small scissors with sharp points will do the job. Curvy lines will adhere better. A pointy corner can come loose if it’s picked at.

5. Glue it down

Now get out your crafting glue and paint a coat of it on the basket. Put your fabric cutouts on the glue and coat it with more glue, pressing it into the cracks and creases of the weave. Keep gluing and pasting until you cover the basket like you want it.

By the way, decorating with paper is called decoupage. Maybe the French have another word for it when you decorate with fabric, but I don’t know what it is. Either way, it’s still the same process.

6. Let it dry.

While all your little shapes are drying on the baskets, make some Easter grass so you won’t get stuck with that plastic colored stuff that never decomposes. Although it’s no longer the norm, sometimes at the last-minute, it might be the last thing on the shelf.

If you have a paper shredder that cuts strips you can make Easter grass. You can shred colored printer paper or tissue paper to make Easter grass, or you can use what’s already in the bin before you recycle it.  If the shreds are short, insert paper into the shredder the long way. Legal paper will also make longer shreds.

Pile a basketful of shredded paper on a baking sheet or dump it in a large bowl or roasting pan. If you need to make a LOT of it, you can lay it out on a shower curtain. Pile up more than you think you need.

7. Make some Easter grass

Food coloring is a safe and easy way to color the paper. Keep in mind food coloring will stain your hands and most anything else it comes in contact with. Wear rubber gloves if you have them. Wear something that won’t be ruined if it’s stained. Cover your work area with newspapers if you need to protect it from splatters.

This can be an outside job if it’s not windy. Not windy days are hard to come by in the spring in Oklahoma, so I did this in the kitchen.

Domino was on hand to supervise.

Put an inch or two of water in a spray bottle and add food coloring. Less water equals more color. Spritz the shredded paper, toss it and spritz again. You can use salad tongs for the tossing if you don’t have gloves. Keep tossing and spritzing until you get the color you want.

Keep in mind the paper will dry lighter than it looks when it’s wet.  Let it dry between sprays. You want green grass, not green pulp.

Have a damp cloth handy to wipe up overspray and any drips. Wash any food coloring off your hands as soon as you finish. A pumice stone is useful to scrub away stains on your hands. If you get it on your clothes, oops. Rinse, pretreat and launder immediately.

8. Fill it up

I used leftover blue packing tissue in one basket and my homemade grass in the other.

Ta da!

The baskets were less than a dollar and I had everything else on hand. Even if you have to buy the supplies it won’t cost much to decorate several baskets. And the bonus is they aren’t likely to get broken before the eggs are gathered and the candy is eaten.

You can break out the orange and black paint and turn them into trick-or-treat baskets in the fall. Just paint over the Easter bunnies and cut out some witches and flying monkeys to use.

If storage space is at a premium at your house after the holiday you can pass them along to a friend or donate them back to the thrift store. You can start over and make new baskets again next year.

As your kids get older, but not too old for Easter treats, they’ll be able to make their own baskets with varying degrees of supervision.  This would be a good spring break project.

Here’s hoping the Easter bunny brings you lots of goodies.  And as for me and my basket, I want lots of dark chocolate!

Jan