How to Make Your Own Gift Baskets

Gift baskets are beautiful, extravagant, and full of little treasures. They can be bought at a moderate to high price, or they can be made for pennies on the dollar. I will tell you how you can make a beautiful gift basket-CHEAP! Some supplies needed are baskets, skewers, tape, newspaper, paper filler (the color of your choice), basket wrap, spool of wire ribbon to match paper filler, and the basket items.

The most important item is the basket. Make sure that it is large enough to support all of the items that will be added. Baskets can be purchased at Goodwill, the local discount store, or local craft store. The baskets that work the best are the medium to large size wicker baskets with a handle.

Once the basket is purchased, the bottom of the basket needs to be filled with wadded newspapers. Use single newspaper pages and wad them to the size of a baseball or softball. Place them evenly along the bottom of the basket, with no gaps between each sheet of paper. Make sure that the paper wads aren’t wadded too tightly. These wads are used as anchors, but they need to be loose enough to poke through. Leave about an inch gap from the top of the basket to the top of the newspaper.
When all the paper is in place, add the paper filler evenly on the top to cover all of the newspaper so that none of the newspaper is showing. Make sure that the filler isn’t piled too high. This is a judgment call on how much filler is needed.