Valentine Heart Baskets
Remember the old days, of weaving in place mats for holiday gatherings, and making cute little heart baskets the same way!! Recently I saw something similar in a magazine somewhere and thought I could do that with patterned paper as well! How fun, bringing back something old that has always been cherished and fun to make! It’s such an adorable and cute gift to give to your kids, friends, teachers, or even make them for the entire class. Once you make one, they are so simple, and take no time at all!
- To make the baskets you first need to decide on 2 pieces of patterned paper. You want to be sure to use 2 different colors so that the weave stands out more.
- Once you decide on the paper you wish to use, it’s time to pull out some basic tools to make your template. For mine I used a circle cutter, ruler, scissors and paper trimmer.
- To make the template - grab an old scrap piece of cardstock, it doesn’t matter what it looks like this is just to serve as a guide for the baskets.
- I used a circle cutter as my guide for the top, drew half way around the circle. (Make sure when you do this that the folded side is on the bottom – and the open side is the top where the circle will be) If you don’t have a circle cutter don’t worry, you don’t have to have one, find something around your house that will work just as well, a can, cup or bowl would do the job just as well.
- Using a ruler I drew a straight line from either side of the circle, then drew lines down from the circle, to the bottom fold of the paper.
- Next grab your ruler and find the dimensions across, marking the space evenly. Mine was exactly 4 inches across, so I marked every inch and cut each line from the bottom fold up to the guide mark with my paper trimmer. (remember not to cut up above your guide mark or your heart will not be a heart in the end)
- Your template should look something like this:
- Now that you have your template ready grab your patterned paper and lets get started. *smiles* Fold the paper over in half so it is exactly 6 inches in length, similar to what you did with the template. (Remember however that the part that you want to show on the outside should be folded inside, so you won’t have to erase lines later)
- Using your template trace the following pattern onto the backside of your patterned paper. (Again making sure that the fold is on the bottom, and the open side of your folded paper is on the top where the circle is)
- Measure your marks as you did above for the template like so:
- After marking and cutting off the side of your paper, you should have something that looks similar to mine such as in the photo below.
- Free-hand cut out the circle with scissors, then using your paper trimmer cut along the marks, remembering not to cross the above guide mark such as:
- Unfold your paper, and fold them again with the right side out – such as mine below – so that we can now start to assemble the baskets:
- Now that we have our pattern cut and folded, we are ready to start weaving! In order to weave you need to remember one simple rule – it’s back and forth taking turns. Say with mine… I know the photo doesn’t demonstrate it completely as I just realized, because the pieces should actually be woven inside and through one another, but you get the general idea I hope – just say to yourself as I did, or better yet sing a little song to yourself, which is what I really did… haha! “Pink through the inside of black – then black through the inside of pink” alternating down each row until it was completely woven. (If you are unsure whether yours is woven right or not – try opening the top, if it doesn’t open, simply pull the weaves apart and restart weaving, it may take a moment to get the hang of it, as it did me, but a few practices and you’ll be a pro at it!)
- Once woven, you should have a beautiful heart that opens on the inside and looks something like this.
- You can either leave the heart as is, or add a cute little handle such as I did. Just cut a strip of paper, and adhere it to the left front hand corner (on the inside) to the right back corner (on the inside as well) You can use glue or anything you wish to adhere the handle. For mine I used glue – only to realize that once I stuffed it with heavy stuff it would probably fall apart, so I stapled it giving it more strength.
Now that you are finished with your heart basket you can embellish, fill with goodies or anything your heart desires! That was easy and fun wasn’t it? I was amazingly surprised how fast it went after the first one, and had to make a few more. So easy in fact I think I am going to make each of my ds’s classmates one for valentines day and fill it with fun little goodies.
I also thought I would note just in case you do wish to make a bunch for gifts or such, as I am planning to for my sons class – 2 sheets of 12x12 patterned paper will make 3 heart baskets. So say for a class of 21 students – you will need approximately 14 sheets of paper. (7 of one pattern and 7 of another) Or you could even use 7 pieces of patterned paper, along with 7 pieces of cardstock) Hope that helps, and can’t wait to see the baskets you all create!
Ashley’s woven Heart Basket:
I filled each of these up with little craft goodies such as beads, sequence, just fun stuff! I then used the paper to cover each of the wrappers on the packages, so they matched the heart baskets and embellished with fun little things like ribbon. My kids love to craft, so these gifts are perfect for them, not to mention it keeps them from overloading on candy ;)
Supplies Used:
Jeffrey’s woven Heart Basket
I filled each of these up with little craft goodies such as beads, sequence, just fun stuff! I then used the paper to cover each of the wrappers on the packages, so they matched the heart baskets and embellished with fun little things like ribbon. My kids love to craft, so these gifts are perfect for them, not to mention it keeps them from overloading on candy ;)
Supplies Used:
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