Today's "Small" Project

Flower girl baskets! We have four flower girls in our ceremony. I know what you're thinking, ONE small child is hard enough to get in order let alone THREE more on top. While I may be certifiable, I felt it was necessary. One flower girl is Mister and I's 3 year old. It was a given to include her. Then Mister has 2 sister's, one older and younger. I get along far better with the younger one than the older one (and I don't think she'd be too keen on purchasing a dress and parading around for the night anyway) so I didn't ask the older one to be in the wedding party. I felt though that as a nice touch I'd include her 4 kids in the wedding. So it was born that Mister's 3 nieces would also be flower girls. They are older than our little one, the oldest will be 8 at the time of the wedding and the other two will be 4, almost 5. They'll walk down the aisle 2 by 2 as to not take too long.

Back to the point of this post! The DIY project. I went to Joann's around Easter and they were having 60% off of all baskets. I grabbed 4 small ones, about 4in x 3in and promptly purchased them. They were 2.99 BEFORE the 60% off. After the discount they were 1.19 a piece. They are a natural wood color so Mister and I went to Walmart and bought 2 large cans of white gloss spray paint for $4 each. Lastly, I had purchased a roll of bright red ribbon from Michaels to make belly bands for invitations and line the bottom of the centerpiece vases (coming in a later posts) so since I had it I used that ribbon to weave through the slats 2 of the baskets. Mister was so kind as to run the ribbon through and hot glue it on the inside so it will stay in place. The other 2 baskets were already woven together, much tighter than the previous two. Here shines MY creativity. ;) Are you ready now? Can you handle this? Imma 'bout to blow your mind. Here goes. I wrapped the ribbon around (about 15" per basket) and hot glued it in place. I then made bows and hot glued those vertically over the part where the ribbon stopped, not only masking the seam of the ribbon but making a cute decorative feature.

The only disadvantage of doing it this way is that it takes MULTIPLE coats of spray paint to saturate the wood. It's VERY thirsty and soaks up the paint really fast, so if you plan on going this route lay it on and lay it on THICK. Don't be afraid to get a little messy. ;)

As far as numbers goes, here's the breakdown. Now I'm going to mention that I'm only taking into account the amount actually USED during the project. If I have leftover ribbon I can use it somewhere else and it wouldn't be fair to include the entire cost of that product in this budget breakdown. Numbers...GO:

$5.08 for 4 baskets
$1.28 (15" per basket, additional 6" per bows on 2 baskets 2yrs used of 4yrd ribbon roll)
$6.45 for spray paint (have at least half a can left, can use it for something else maybe?)
hot glue on hand
GRAND TOTAL: $12.81 or $3.21 each

Not too shabby :)