Weekend Mini-Make: DIY Rope basket

I'm back with another Weekend Mini-Make today: a quick craft you can complete over the weekend for less than a tenner. And even better than that, all my mini-makes are designed to be something beginners can try their hand at, whilst also being a relaxing, well-being boost. As I've mentioned before, I regularly turn to DIY and crafting when times get hard, so for me, having a creative outlet has become a vital part of my everyday life. I hope that these simple, cheap crafting ideas will inspire others to have a go, and see if it can make big changes in their life too.

I'm super excited to share this week's make as I'm really proud of it - I made a basket out of a piece of rope!

You will need:
20m length of rope - This entire reel cost me £6 on eBay
Glue gun
Wool for tassels

Total spend: £6

How to make a DIY rope basket
The first thing you need to do is create the base of the basket, which is so much easier than I thought it was going to be. Using a glue gun to stick the rope down, wind the rope around in a circle, applying glue as you go until you get a disc 30cm wide. Cut the rope and glue the end to the side of the disc, and you've created your base.

Next onto building the sides of the basket. In the same way as before, wind the rope around the base, applying the hot glue and sticking the rope down onto the piece below as you go along. 

Once you've built your basket up to your desired height - mine came to 40cm high - cut the rope at an angle to avoid it fraying and glue it down.

I then created some handles with the remaining rope, squeezing them through a hole in the basket, and again gluing them down to the inside.

I then made three tassels from wool I had leftover from a previous craft - the instructions on how to make these are on this post - and I then poked them through a hole in the basket, and again gluing them to the inside.

And thats it! I'm so impressed with how easy this was, so will definitely be having another go soon. There's so many different things you could make too - how about on a smaller scale to create plant pots? Or you could even make a tray by only building the sides up a few centimetres.

Hope you enjoyed this quick and simple DIY - let me know if you make one, I'd love to see! And I'll be back next Friday with another quick craft perfect for completing over the weekend.

Thanks for reading,
Sam Xx