Ok, you’ve gotten all of your treats in order and you’re ready to assemble your basket but you need a little guidance—don’t worry! We’re here to help. You’ve already tackled half the battle let’s just get your great gifts looking gorgeous!
Step 1: Grab all of your Gifts
Have all of your gifts all laid out in front of you and available. This makes assembling the basket much easier so you don’t have to run around the house looking for the gifts you purchased.
Step 2: Gather Your Materials
What you’ll need is the actual basket itself, paper stuffing, paper shred, ribbon or twine, cellophane plastic gift wrap and sharp scissors.
Step 3: Add Stuffing
Start by adding paper stuffing to your basket. Add the crinkled paper to the bottom of the basket. This paper doesn’t have to be anything fancy, this can be crumbled newspaper if you have it! The paper stuffing should fill the basket up at least halfway. This allows the gifts to be seen in the basket and sit up high, versus being hidden by the basket itself.
Step 4: Add Paper Shred
Add a layer of paper shred to your basket, on top of the paper stuffing. This gives the gifts a nice bed to sit on that looks visually appealing while also giving adding stability for the gifts on as you place them in the basket.
Step 5: Add Your Gifts
Now it’s time to add your gifts! Yay! Add your gifts to the basket in an attractive way. I like to add the largest or tallest item to the basket first. I usually add this to the back center of the basket and arrange the rest of the gifts, by descending height, on either side. Imagine an equilateral triangle in the back row of your basket. Now that the triangle is in place, add gifts in the foreground of the basket and triangle—these should be shorter smaller gifts. A little overlap is perfectly fine, but as long as the gifts in front aren’t taller than the gift in back, your basket will look great.
Step 6: Wrap in Cellophane
After every last gift has been added to the basket, it’s time wrap the basket in cellophane. For this step you will need the cellophane, ribbon or twine and sharp scissors. Move the filled basket off the surface you’re working on for a moment while you lay out the cellophane. I always find with cellophane you need more than you think, so allow for a lot of space. After you roll out the cellophane, but before you cut it to size, place your Easter basket in the center of the rolled out cellophane. With the basket in the very center, make sure the ends of the plastic can come up and touch each other. You’ll not only want the ends to touch each other but you’ll also want to have at least six inches of additional cellophane length, beyond where the plastic meets at the top of the basket. This allows for that beautiful plume of plastic at the top of the Easter basket! If your basket is large enough or an odd shape, you might need to do this twice, if so follow this step for the basket’s length and width so you’ll have two sheets of cellophane.
Step 7: Cut and Tie
Now that you have enough cellophane to cover the entire basket, gather all ends of the cellophane at above the top of the basket. With one end of your twine or ribbon in hand, pull each side of cellophane as tight as you can to rest on top of the basket handle or of the tallest gift. Wrap the ribbon or twine around your handful of plastic and tie a knot or a bow. If you have enough dexterity, tie a beautiful bow. If not, tie an initial knot or ribbon or twine to contain all of the cellophane pieces. Then go back and trim the ends of the knot and tie a beautiful bow over knot.
(Optional) Step 8: Heat the Cellophane
For smaller baskets, you’re probably good to go and good to gift after step 7! For larger baskets you might be ok to stop at step 7 as well. But if you had to use more than one sheet of cellophane and you want to clean up some of the additional folds of plastic around the bottom of your basket you can do one of two things:
Option one, you can use a blow dryer to turn the cellophane to shrink wrap around the bottom of the basket. The heat will make the plastic shrink down into a tighter, crinkled silhouette. Start with the blow dryer on the lowest heat and far away from the basket. Gradually move closer to the basket while not burning the plastic. Going slow will help you get an idea of how the plastic is crinkling and the direction to angle the blow dryer.
Option two, if you’re worried about how the crinkle will look after the blow dryer, an easier option is to wrap a wide ribbon around the basket to hide some of those cellophane folds. This option is easier since the effect of the heat on the cellophane is harder to control if you’re newer at this technique.
Hopefully these steps will give you the confidence to create your own gift baskets for any time of year!
Very Happy Gift Baskets!
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VHM
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