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I've grown slightly obsessed with wandering the aisles of Home Depot during my lunch hour. I went in just the other day to replenish my stock of spray paint, and on my way to check out, I found myself in the rope and chain aisle. I thought to myself… what can I do with some rope? I totally dig the look and feel of adding rope or woven seagrass baskets to a room. The natural fibers and tone usually have a softening effect to any bold decor, and they also provide a stylish way to hide dog toys, remotes or Playstation controllers. I decided to buy some rope to play with and maybe even make my own basket! I chose the manila rope for it's slightly darker tone over the sisal rope, which is light sandy color. 50' should give me a nice sized basket!
That same night I grabbed my glue gun, a dozen glue sticks, a bag of pop corn, popped in a movie and went to work! I still didn't know the exact shape of basket I wanted to make, so I just went with it! Here's what I did…
Step 1 – unravel 1 inch of the rope's end, roll rope and tuck the unraveled end on the bottom and secure it in place with some hot glue
Step 2 – roll the rope around itself, in the shape of a cow pie, and secure in place with hot glue. I glued the entire way around and made sure the glue didn't drip through. You could probably get away with gluing every 1/4 inch or so…
Step 3 – keep rolling and gluing! For the base, I circled around about 10-12 times, measured a radius of about 4". Then I started circling and gluing slightly on top of the previous roll to start making the walls of the basket
Step 4 – build the walls! keep rolling and gluing on top of each prior roll. You can see from the pic it's starting to make shape :)
Step 5 – I built the walls to this point and noticed I only about 6' of rope remaining. I decided to create a saucer-like or bell shaped edge around the rim of the basket, so i gradually changed the pattern by gluing on the sides of the last roll, rather than on top like I did when I was building the walls.
Step 6 – I was almost out of rope, about 2', and I needed to secure the rope's end… on the second to last roll I left an inch-gap free from any glue so that on the last roll I could tuck the end of the rope through the gap and glue on the underside of the saucer-top. I unraveled and flattened the end of the rope and doused it with glue.
Here's the finishing look:
Hmmm…. does it look like a hat to you? cus it does to me!
Whatev's! It's still super cute! Here's the view from the top, in case you were confused about the "saucer" shape
And the finishing touch:
It's cute, simple, textured, neutral to any decor, and holds a lot of fruit! Next time I think I'll try a rectangle shaped basket, with handles even, and maybe with that sisal rope!
