Project of the Day (Night?) #1

I stayed home sick today, which means that I have been lying in bed pretty much all day today, doing work and sleeping. It's unbelievably boring.

This led to my newest idea- a "Project of the Day" series! These will be projects that are easy and relatively quick to complete, so they could be good for kids or someone looking for a way to get through a couple of hours when there's nothing else to do (because that happens so often, you know?) Anyways, simple, cheap, fun, and with useful results.

On that note, today's project is to make Newspaper Baskets, inspired by a post from this blog that I stumbled on. It seems like a fun project, but I will be adapting it a little and taking photos as I go.
1. Gather materials! The bare necessities are newspaper and scissors, but I added clips (to hold the basket together, you'll see them in later pictures) and paint.

2. To make the strips, I used half of a sheet each (one page), and folded it in half lengthwise 4 times. The base of my basket was 4 strips by 4 strips.

My hands turned kinda gray from the newsprint, which you can see in the picture. You can also see the bandage covering my wound from the Great Scissor Disaster of Last Weekend, but that's enough about that.

3. After I made the base, I folded the sides up, and started weaving around the edges of the "basket". I chose to do one continuous strip, by attaching the end of one strip to another, rather than stacked circles (which would have made my basket more even in the end.)

4. After I had added a few strips, and gotten the basket to a height I liked, I cut down the strips and tucked them in to seal the edges.


5. Now, since this was my first newspaper basket attempt, I'm not surprised that it came out like a kindergardener's project- lopsided and odd-loooking. So I painted it! Nothing a coat of metallic purple paint can't fix.

Since I had extra newspaper strips, I decided to make a matching plate for the bowl to sit on. This worked better than the bowl, to be honest. It was 5 strips by 5 strips, and I painted it metallic blue. I think it will make a nice combo.