May Day Baskets

I made up a couple of quick but pretty little May Day baskets last night to share with some friends today.  Main supplies used in this are a yogurt cup (or something similar that you rescued from the recycling bin), an empty toilet paper tube, some ribbon or rickrack, some cupcake liners (check your dollar store – I find tons of really pretty ones at Dollarama), a pair of scissors (I used my awesome Westcott Titanium Scissors), and some glue (I used Aleene’s Tacky Glue – I started off with Beacons 3 in 1 because it was handy but found the Aleene’s worked better for this project).

For this one, I used the yogurt cup.  I also made similar ones using disposable cups that I cut down to size.  I simply dabbed some glue on the bottom of the cup and added a cupcake liner.  These liners are a combination from Dollarama and some Mary Engelbreit ones from the Michaels clearance bins.  More glue, another cupcake liner to stack them up.  If they are nesting too much, I used some dabs of glue around the edges of one liner and popped the other one on leaving some of the edge exposed.  Then I lined the inside of the yogurt cup in a similar manner – I found it worked best to cut the bottoms off the cupcake liners and then cut it open so it was a strip.  I added a piece of bright yellow rickrack (purchased at Fabricland) as a handle.  Filled with little candies, this will make a sweet treat for a friend!

For this one, I used the toilet paper tube.  Flatten one end of the tube and glue it shut (for quicker results you could also tape or staple it shut).  I cut the bottoms off a bunch of cupcake liners (again a combination of dollar store and Mary Engelbreit) and slid them onto the tube.  You can cut slits in them and take little tucks to make them fit or cut them apart into strips and glue those around the tube.  Once again, I glued a few into the inside of the top of the tube as well for a more finished look.  This time I used a thin ribbon as a hanger and as a final detail, I added the saying from one of the discarded (well, saved for another project) Mary Engelbreit cupcake liner bottoms : Plant seeds of kindness; harvest happy hearts.  For this one, a little bunch of flowers would be lovely but I think given the season and the saying on it, tucking in a little packet of seeds would be sweet too!

I can see these baskets having many more uses beyond today as well – using the appropriate materials to embellish they’d be great for weddings, baby/wedding showers, birthday parties, tea parties, as Christmas favours or even to hang on the tree, Easter baskets, and so much more.