Friday, December 09, 2005

Basketmaking for Gift-giving

Carmon, at Buried Treasure Books, posted a very interesting craft idea on Dec. 4. She described how to make an attractive gift basket using 3 or 4 paper grocery bags. She makes these, fills them with small related items, and gives the completed baskets as gifts. In case you have trouble linking to her site, here are the directions and a picture of one of her completed baskets. As you can see, Carmon used some pretty white with red bags for this basket. Regular brown paper sacks would be attractive in a different way.

  • Fold the top edge of the first bag down approximately 1 1/2 inches, then continue folding down until the folded edge is 1-2 inches from the bottom of the bag.
  • Do the same with the next bag, but don’t fold down quite as far, so that when you nest it in the first bag, the bottom of its folded edge touches the top folded edge of the first bag.
  • Then fold the third bag the same way so that it nests properly inside the second. All three bags will now be nested together to make a basket.
  • If you wish, you can also use another bag to make a handle: Cut around the bag making a loop about 6 inches wide. Fold the edges of your loop to the center of your loop all the way around, and glue down, then put the loop between the bottom and middle sections of your basket (take the bags apart to do this), gluing it to the inside bottom and up the sides of your basket, then nesting the bags together again.
  • You can tie a big bow to the handle to make it prettier. You could stamp or paint a design on the outside of the baskets.
  • Line the basket with pretty tissue paper, and use your imagination to fill it up. (How about a movie rental coupon and a couple of bags of microwave popcorn for a movie buff?)

5 comments:

Terrell said...

Cute idea, Joan. I need to think of a good use for this with my kids at school.

I use a paper grocery bag to make a great portfolio for a book unit. I use it with a travel story in our reading book. I'll have to describe it for my fellow teachers in a post soon. (Maybe it's a well-known trick: I just learned it last year.)

Ruth said...

The baskets look great. But most grocery bags are plastic today and paper bags are hard to come by. I wanted to make some cloth draw string bags to put childrens gifts in but it is too late since i haven't even started....
Where can you get the large paper bags....

Terrell said...

I think the Pig still gives you a choice between paper and plastic, because we have gotten bags there for various school projects.

Anonymous said...

Cool, but mine would probably look ugly!

Joan said...

Thanks, Jozjozjoz, for you visit and comment. I went over and had a look at your site. Looks like you are a busy girl! Try the basket; you might be surprised how good it will look!