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April 17, 2024

Upcycling: Basket made of cardboard and bundle cord braiding

Small baskets for pens, bath utensils or kitchen herbs are quickly made with some cardboard and string. Braiding is fun for children too.

For my basket I used the packaging of my printer paper. For larger baskets, the base of the box must be correspondingly large. Record the desired base area with ruler and pencil and then draw the desired basket height on the sides. For me, the basket is 5 cm high. Split the areas for the height. In doing so, cut in at intervals of 1 cm with the craft knife or scissors (Fig. 2).

Then always a 1 centimeter wide tab is completely cut off. This creates a gap (see Figure 3). This space can also be chosen slightly smaller and the bridge a little wider. It is important that there is even a gap between the tabs. Otherwise, the package tape can not be braided properly without this distance. The cardboard would then tear too fast during weaving.

The number of tabs must be an odd number. This allows the cord to be woven over and under the tabs without settling. In my picture are shown 28 tabs. I also cut one off at the corner. The tabs are first folded up so that the shape of the basket is recognizable. Then, as is the case with classic weaving, the pact band is always woven before and then behind the paperbags. In the second row, the tape is woven in opposite directions, i. If the line was in the first row in front of the flap, it is in the second row behind the flap (picture 4). Due to the odd number of cardboard bars, this change, however, results automatically. You can just keep working in a circle. This is very fast and is easy to handle even for children from 7 years. At the upper edge, a thread is wrapped around the edge with a needle so that the weave can not come loose.