DIY Rope Baskets

The other day I was browsing on Pinterest and came across this awesome rope basket from Design Sponge:

Design Sponge

That's pretty awesome isn't it?!


And what perfect timing! It's just what I needed for inspiration. Last week I posted the night tables I modified for my sister and BIL:

Life Designed

Before I dropped these off at their house, I went shopping for some baskets to put in the open shelf but I was appalled at the prices! Why are baskets so darn expensive?!

So when I came across Design Sponge's DIY rope basket, I thought, "That's it!". Although mine's a bit different I need to give credit where credit is due for the inspiration.

I was going to get cardboard gift boxes at the dollar store but the store I went to was sold out of them. However, they did have these plastic boxes:

Life Designed

They didn't have it in white and I knew the yellow would show through so I spray painted the whole thing (including the inside) in Krylon's Ocean Breeze. Now you all know I'm not the biggest fan of Krylon spray paint...but that's all they had so I did a little spray test just to make sure I was getting the blue that was on the cap and thankfully it was a match.

Life Designed

I went to several stores looking for white rope. I was really hoping the dollar store would have it but the two I went to didn't have what I was looking for. Darn.

So then I went to Canadian Tire and ended up getting 3/16" clothesline. I was going to just get one package because I thought surely 50' would be enough to cover both baskets! But...just in case, I got 2.

Life Designed

I love the idea of colour blocking the rope and I envisioned a white basket with a chunky band of blue.

Life Designed

I sprayed several feet of the rope blue and then with a glue gun glued the rope to the basket- you can see the transition of the colors in the picture.

Life Designed

Not really a chunky band of blue huh? I wanted the blue part to be at least 2 inches thicker but I ran out of spray paint...

(PS I needed WAY more rope! The 50' only covered half the basket!)

Life Designed

I realized much too late, that a better plan would have been for me to spray only part of the basket blue and the rest of the basket white instead of wasting all the blue paint on the entire basket. (You can see the blue paint inbetween the white rope. If it was painted white back there, this would look a lot better).

Life Designed

I do love the rope texture and the blue interior.

Life Designed

It's a perfect fit to the shelf! (I didn't want to deal with the cut out handles, so I just wrapped the rope over it as you can see in the picture).

Life Designed



Here's the comparison between the plain basket and the roped basket. I think the plain one looks just fine but it looks more juvenile- good for a kids room!

Honestly I think it turned out just OK. Like I said I wanted the blue "band" to be chunkier AND I wish I had found thicker rope. I think those 2 changes would make this basket look 100x better!

Sigh...maybe next time. =)