At some point in my life, I saw a tutorial for how to weave a basket out of magazines. I have now tried it three times and each time I wound up insanely frustrated with a pile of intertwined garbage (and not in a good way). It did not go well. However, in my last attempt, I found a way to cheat and create a fake wicker basket using magazine tubes. It’s very easy, just kind of time consuming and uses up a lot of hot glue. But it is a great craft to do while binge watching TV, because it doesn’t take a lot of mental effort.

 

Supplies:

  • To make tubes:
    • Magazines/catalogs/newspaper/junk mail
    • Scissors
    • Wooden skewer or dowel
    • Glue stick
  • To make basket:
    • Magazine tubes
    • Hot glue gun and glue
    • Box or cardboard to make a box
    • Paint (optional- I painted mine brown for a faux wicker look)
    • Modge Podge (optional)

 

1. The first thing you will have to do is make a bunch of magazine tubes. For the tutorial, click here.

 

2. If you are choosing to use an already constructed box, proceed to step 3. If you are making your own box, now is the time. To do this, I cut pieces of cardboard (cracker box) for each side and hot glued them into a box/basket shape. You can hot glue a magazine tube at each inside seam to help reinforce it.

 

3. Begin to glue the magazine tubes to the outside of your box. Cut off any extra that overhangs (you can use these to cover the bottom). There is a lot of leeway on this. For mine, I put the tubes horizontally on all sides, then added vertical ones at the corners to hide the ends.

 

You can also cover the bottom of the box if you would like it. Just make sure that it still lays flat and even. I used extra pieces that I had cut off the sides to cover the bottom. Then I added tubes along the edges to hide the ends that stuck out at the bottom.

 

4. If you would like, you can leave your basket as is. Some of the patterns on the tubes look really cool together. I chose to paint mine to make it look more like a wicker basket.

 

5. Throw on a layer of Modge Podge to give it a little shine and you now have a basket without having to weave a single thing.

 

Coming soon: stay tuned for Harry Potter potion ornaments that you can proudly display in your basket.