Paper Easter basket

Use paper weaving to make this simple Easter basket. Perfect for collecting some (not-very-heavy) Easter eggs …

With Easter around the corner, today’s craft is a paper Easter basket.

This craft involves paper weaving. Paper weaving is great as it’s pretty simple to do and yet the finished effect is super cool.

Plus, you don’t need much in terms of supplies – just paper, scissors and a glue stick, and you’re good to go!

The nice thing about these paper baskets is that they can make a really nice Easter gift. Once your child has made their basket, you can put some little chocolate eggs inside or an Easter card and you’ve got a really sweet homemade gift for them to give to a relative or friend.

Ready to get going with this Easter basket craft? Scroll down for step by step instructions.

What you will need

• 2 x sheets of coloured paper (two different colours ideally)

• extra strip of paper for the handle

• scissors

• glue stick

• ruler and pencil

How to make your paper woven Easter basket, step by step

Step 1

First, fold one of your pieces of paper in half. Turn your paper so that the fold of the paper is at the bottom.

Then, starting an inch from the edge, measure and draw vertical lines an inch apart. (My paper here is 9 inches wide so it was easy to space out the lines. If your paper is not a round number, you may need to adjust the measurements slightly so that your lines are evenly spaced out…)

Make sure the lines don’t go all the way to top – leave about an inch of space along the top like so:

Step 2

Next cut upwards along each of the lines you have marked out. Again, don’t forget to stop about 1 inch from the top edge of the paper.

Step 3

Next you will need to use your other piece of paper. Ideally for the best effect, this should be another colour.

With your paper turned to a portrait orientation, draw lines horizontally, again an inch apart (or the same width as the lines you cut on the first piece of paper above).

Cut along the lines so you have lots of individual strips of paper to weave with:

Depending on the age of your child, you may want to help them by measuring and the drawing lines for them so that they can just cut along the lines and get going with the weaving part.

Step 4

Next, start weaving! With the first strip of paper (in yellow), start weaving under and then over the vertical panels of paper (in blue).

Keep weaving under and then over until the strip reaches the other edge of the paper.

Step 5

With the next strip you will want to do the opposite of the previous strip in terms of the ‘unders’ and ‘overs’.

As you can see from the picture below, the first strip went over the blue paper first, so with this second strip we start by going under.

By alternating each strip like this, you get the cool checkerboard pattern.

Step 5

Repeat with the remaining strips of paper until the checkerboard pattern reaches all the way down the paper.

With each strip, make sure it is pushed upwards so that it is right next to the strip above and there’s no gap.

Step 6

When you’ve finished weaving the paper strips through, you’ll want to fix them in place.

To do this we used a glue stick to stick the ends of the strips down.

Once you’ve glued the strips, cut off any extra paper sticking over the edges.

Step 7

Next you’ll want to help your child turn their sheet of woven paper into a basket. To do this, first fold the paper in half like so:

Take two strips of paper, again about an inch thick, and fold these in half lengthways.

Put glue on the insides and stick along the edges of the basket.

Trim the these edging strips so they are the same height as the basket.

Step 8

Once the glue is dry, you can add a handle to the basket.

Take the strip of paper that you want to use for the handle. At either end (approximately the first couple of inches) fold and crease lengthways.

Put glue on the back of the strip at both ends. Stick each end of the strip to the inside of the basket at the top.

And your basket is done!

There are lots of things you can do with these baskets – use them as an envelope for a home made Easter card, or fill them with a few chocolate eggs and some fluffy chicks to make an Easter gift.

If it’s Easter crafts you’re looking for, have you seen our Easter chick pop-up card, Easter bunny or chick and egg craft?

Thanks so much for stopping to read about these Easter baskets. Until next time!

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