DIY Flower Girl Basket

Tom and I are both history geeks, and before we left Kansas City, we visited the Oregon Trail Museum. At this point you are probably wondering what this has to do with a flower girl basket, well, the souvenir shop at the museum had "make your own basket" kits. I thought it was cool, so I bought one. Later on, once we moved to Maine, I pulled the basket kit out and decided to give it a whirl. A couple hours and many sore fingers later I had a cute little basket with a handle. Being a bride goes straight to your head, and the first thing I thought was, "What a cute little basket! It would be great for a flower girl!"

I'm not going to go through the steps involved in weaving a basket, since it came from a kit and all, but I took pictures of the whole process.



Now I have a finished basket. But it needs to be a little more fancy to be a flower girls basket...

You will need:

• Basket with handle
• 1 yd of wide ribbon (I made my ribbon with left over fabric from my ring bearer pillow)
• 1 yd of narrow ribbon
• seashell or other motif
• hot glue gun
• pearls or beads for embellishment

What you do:

1. With the wide ribbon, tie a bow around one of the handles.
2. Wrap the narrow ribbon around the handle just under the wide ribbon bow and tie a simple knot.
3. Put a drop of hot glue on the center of the large bow and over the knot in the narrow ribbon. Place your shell or other motif in the glue.
4. Wrap the narrow ribbon around your shell and tie a square knot over it.
5. Put a drop of hot glue over the knot and add your embellishment, I used three pearls.

Depending on your basket, you might want to add a piece of fabric or a small pillow inside to prevent flower petals from falling through. I am going to be using silk rose petals which are fairly uniform in size, so I'm just leaving my basket as is. This is a really simple project, but it's nice to have a matching flower girl basket and ring bearer set that fits with my purple/green nautical theme.