Baskets From Found Materials Week 3 -Plastic and Seaweed

This week my basket is a bit different. Instead of natural materials found outside I have mainly used man made materials that I had in the house that would have been thrown out if not used in the basket. I’ve had two empty tonic bottles hanging around my kitchen waiting for recycling for a while and I also found a few old plastic bags that I had kept because I thought they might be useful one day. This week I decided to make use of these as the raw materials for my basket.

Plastic Bottles and Bags used in Basket

The technique used is stake and strand rather than coiling using an idea I found in Lois Walpoles book Weave, Coil and Plait Crafty Containers from Recycled Materials (Leisure Arts). This book has a wealth of ideas on how to recycle materials but the one I used was to cut a section of bottle and then cut the sides of this into strips that are used as stakes to weave round with strips of plastic cut from the bags.

Basket Made From Plastic Bottles and Plastic Bags with seaweed

I used sections of two bottles to make a wine goblet shaped basket and decorated the rim with seaweed.

Basket Made From Plastic Bottles and Plastic Bags with seaweed