Through weaving and textile arts, different cultures can showcase their uniqueness from one another by showing how they make vessels in their regions. Since the dawn of civilization, vessels in the form of baskets have played an essential role in daily life – storing, holding, carrying objects, and as an instrument for decoration.
As weaving and textile arts highlight the traditional method of creating vessels, like wooden baskets, these products should be kept with the utmost care, preservation, and decoration.
As woven baskets often make their appearance inside homes, homeowners usually use these baskets with two purposes: storage and decoration. To increase the aesthetic appeal of a woven basket, you can try decorating it with different ways and styles.
Here are ways you can decorate a woven basket:
Play With Colors And Paint Them
Woven baskets are already finished products, but it doesn’t mean you won’t find any creative ways of decorating them. Even if you’re a good painter or not, take your courage in playing with colors by painting your woven baskets. Since most woven baskets come in brownish vintage colors, it can serve as the perfect canvas for your painting.
Painting your woven baskets are greatly cost-efficient since you can find one from thrift and dollar stores. By adding your personal touch, you can make them look like expensive dip-dyed baskets.
Here are tips on how to paint your woven basket:
- To begin, spray gray chalk paint on the whole basket including its insides. Chalk paints easily adhere and dry into the type of material used in woven baskets, so you won’t need any primer at all.
- Once you start with the colors and design of your basket, start with spraying light coats instead of heavy ones to ensure uniformity.
Moreover, the pattern of wicker woven baskets is somehow tricky, so you should be careful in spraying by utilizing different spraying angles.
- Let the coats dry before spraying another. There are no limits in spraying colors in your baskets as long as you prefer them that way.
- To make the design more appealing, you can match the colors of your basket to the overall theme of your house or the specific area where you want to place it.
Mount Them in Walls as Bookshelves
Woven baskets are one of the best items to assist you in getting your things organized. Since storage is the main purpose of woven baskets. However, you can add a twist by mounting them on your walls to use as bookshelves or any objects you wish to categorize. Replacing your ordinary bookshelf and file organizer with wicker woven baskets are creative ways of incorporating a vintage ambiance on your walls that compliments well with the books.
Also, you can add more customization into your baskets by adding rattan ropes on the walls and clipping some of your favorite photographs. This area of the wall will become your personal wall, so you might as well add some of your favorite things, such as your lucky charm and favorite succulent.
You can also add a 3D letter of your name’s first letter and add some fairy lights around it. You can also add some element of time by including a small clock. Everything lies beyond your creativity and imagination.
Hang Them Like an Art Gallery
Aside from using woven baskets with their conventional purposes, why not hang them on your walls as decorative wall baskets? This style of decorating is entirely a DIY project, but you can also settle with buying ready-made wall basket decorations, yet they have a hefty price tag than simply doing it on your own.
To make it more visually and geometrically appealing, use shallower, round baskets instead of tall woven baskets that are rectangular in shape. You can use different circumferences and heights of the baskets. Some baskets already have designs, such as traditional baskets woven by natives. If you don’t have this option, you can incorporate the first technique about painting your own.
If you’re decorating on a budget, you can lessen the number of baskets that you’ll display and replace them with mirrors instead. In this way, you’re adding variety into your wall decor by deviating from the symmetry of your design. Plus, you have an on-the-go mirror on your wall.
Use Them as Side Tables
A picnic basket, other than being used in picnics, can actually be used as your side table. In fact, no one might even think of transforming a picnic basket into a side table. If you think you’ll not be using your picnic basket for a long time, then use it to set your early morning coffee or tea beside your bean bag chair.
Since picnic baskets only have small heights, you can use two picnic baskets and put one above the other. However, they might be a little unstable to use so don’t place anything fragile on it. Nevertheless, it can be your permanent side table if you don’t wish to use them on your picnics anymore.
You can attach the two picnic baskets together and paint them with the same colors and design to combine them into one table. Instead of having drawers on your typical side table, you can also store some valuables inside the picnic basket, also making it a perfect bedside table.
Conclusion
Through creativity, there are many ways of using woven baskets aside from using it as storage to different items. Baskets can be entirely versatile, as you can paint them with your personality, hang them on your walls, or even use it as an unexpected method of storing your things. Lastly, baskets are more affordable to decorate inside your home instead of investing in expensive pieces, as long as you’re innovative enough.