Make a Basket Out of Newspapers
By Sarah E. White
With Earth Day coming up this month I thought it would be fun to make some craft projects using recycled materials.
If you still get a newspaper in your household, you know those papers can pile up pretty quickly. Grab a few sections, do some folding, weaving and taping or gluing and you can make a fun little box to hold craft supplies or anything lightweight you like.
My intention was for this to be a kid’s project, and it definitely could be if you have older kids. My eight-year-old helped me, but I think she might have gotten frustrated trying to do the construction herself.
Younger kids could definitely decorate the basket once it’s done, and kids who can fold a semi-straight line can help make the slats for weaving.
Supplies
•Newspapers
•Tape (or glue stick)
Instructions
Tear two-page sections of the newspaper in half down the middle fold line. You will need single-page sections for this project. If your newspaper has any tabloid-sized sections (our weekly entertainment section is tabloid) those pages are perfect folded top to bottom.
Decide how wide you want your strips to be. I think mine are about an inch, but I just eyeballed it. Fold the paper along the long side, folding it up onto itself until you’ve reached the end. Because my daughter asked you will want to know it doesn’t matter if you have a little extra paper at the end, just fold it over. And you don’t need to accordion fold, just normal folding is perfect.
Once you have a bunch of pieces folded (I used 16 total) you can start to weave the bottom of the basket. I used five pieces going each direction. Lay out the first five pieces (or however many you want to use) then weave the other five across in the traditional over, under, over, under, over fashion, switching the order with the next piece. Make sure you center the weaving along the length of the paper as best you can, because the extra paper on the sides will form the sides of your basket.
When the bottom is finished you can start weaving the sides. This was admittedly more fiddly than I expected. First, you will need to tape two lengths of folded newspaper together. Fold the “sides” of the base up and weave on them as before. They will fall over and it will be a mess. A little patience and tape will help, and it really gets easier after the first one.
I did three rounds of weaving for the sides, which is how much there happened to be room for. I’m sure you could tape more lengths of paper to your initial ones and keep weaving if you wanted a deeper basket.
To finish, I folded the excess paper to the inside and taped it down. I tried glue and it didn’t hold that well, but you could use glue if you’d rather.
I’m a yarn crafter so I put yarn in my box, but you could use it to hold paper, felt, or other lightweight craft supplies, and it’s actually a lot sturdier than you might think.
If you make one I’d love to see it or to hear what you use it for!
--
Sarah E. White is a professional crafter, writer, editor and mom who lives in Fayetteville. She writes about knitting, cross stitch and educational activities for CraftGossip.com and about creativity for moms and other busy people at OurDailyCraft. She loves to make things with and for her 8-year-old daughter.
