Easter Basket Reuse Craft

When my middle son went to preschool at St. Andrew's in Cherry Hill, he had such wonderfully creative teachers, Mrs. Huff and Mrs. Minardi.  They gave out Valentine baskets and I thought they were fabulous!  They made them out of 1/2 gallon ice cream containers (after the ice cream is gone and they are washed out, of course!), tissue paper and decorations.  I stole the idea and gave it a twist:  Easter baskets!

I love them because they are taking some stuff that would otherwise end up in a landfill and giving it a cool new life!  You can have everybody on the block saving their ice cream containers for you and you will end up with enough to give out to a whole classroom full of kids!

Here's what you need to make one:

• 1/2 gallon ice cream container - washed out
• 1 sheet of tissue paper (this can be reused, too....lots of times you have used tissue paper from gifts sitting around and for this project, it doesn't matter if it's crinkly or not!)
• Another small scrap of tissue paper for the inside bottom.
• glue (I just use Elmer's glue in a big bottle, but rubber cement would work well for this, too)

That's it!  First, you glue the small scrap of tissue paper to the inside bottom of the ice cream container.  It will go up the sides a little and that's good!  Next, you set the ice cream container in the middle of the sheet of tissue paper and bring one side up and around the ice cream container and glue it to cover the inside.  From there, you just continue around the ice cream container until the tissue paper is all glued - sort of like wrapping a present, but you are gluing, too.  This will get easier with practice and you will figure out better ways of doing it each time!  The ice cream container will be wrapped in tissue paper. 

Now you can decorate to your heart's content.  You can add a handle by stapling a stiff piece of paper or paper board to the sides of the container and decorate the handle however you want.  I added little scraps of ribbon that I had left over from some balloons we were given (balloons usually have such pretty ribbon attached to them and it's usually pretty long, so it can live another life if you cut it off before you get rid of the balloon).  Mrs. Huff & Mrs. Minardi used glitter glue to decorate theirs.  They didn't have handles, but they decorated the lids so the kids could close them up later (this is a little tricky because sometimes the lid rips the tissue paper or doesn't fit because of the tissue paper).

You could use this idea for any special basket and it makes a cute little container to give a gift, too, if you also save and decorate the lid.

Here are some pictures of the baskets I made last year for my son's preschool class (purple for girls, blue for boys):

Here are the ones I made this year for my religious ed. class (green for boys, purple and pink for girls):

I hope you have fun with this craft!  I'd love to hear what reuse crafts you make!