DIY Wooden Easter Basket Centerpiece

SUPPLIES

• Masonite Panel
• Table Saw
• Brad Nailer Combo Kit
• Wood Glue
• Clamps
• Rust-Oleum Wood Stain, Kona

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STEPS

Part 1: Building the DIY Wooden Easter Basket

I wanted to spend zero dollars on this basket so I rummaged through our scrap wood wheelbarrow looking for some pieces that would work. I decided I wanted the bottom part to look like a wooden crate but I wanted it to be long and narrow. I wanted a handle to make it look like a basket.

1. For the bottom piece I used a scrap piece of masonite panel left over from our vintage gym clock project.

I used the table saw to cut it down to size so it would be the correct width and length to be the bottom of my box.

2. I took a few pieces of scrap wood and cut the pieces down to the size I wanted and started to assemble it.

3. I used a nail gun to attach the wood pieces to the bottom piece of hardboard and to each other to create the box. Brent just got his nail gun for Christmas so this was my first time using it.

Whoa. To say it makes projects go so much faster is an understatement. I did not want to put it down. It made me feel so powerful.

4. Once the bottom of the box was built, I cut the pieces for the handle.

5. I used wood glue and clamps to attach the handle to the base of the wooden basket. After the glue dried, I stained the wooden basket with our favorite Rust-Oleum wood stain in Kona.

Part 2: Dying the Eggs

I haven’t dyed eggs in forever, since I was little but I saw so many pretty naturally dyed eggs done by other bloggers that I really wanted to give it a try.

I am no expert when it comes to dying eggs, especially with food, in fact the only thing I am an expert in is making messes so if nothing else I knew that was going to be an outcome.

I followed the lead from Pinterest when it came to my Easter egg dying supplies. Red cabbage, turmeric, and blueberries seemed to be popular choices for dying solutions. I threw in grape juice in there just for the heck of it. Then of course I needed the eggs, vinegar and jars.

First I boiled the eggs.

I transferred them to this colander that was my great-grandmothers to cool while I started making the solutions.

I hoard almost empty candle jars so before this project began, I removed the wax left in the jars with boiling water, cleaned them up and then they became the perfect containers for the eggs to soak in.

I labeled them with my favorite chalk tape so I could remember what solution I put in each jar.

I am VERY good at making messes. Above is the proof. While I did have about a million dishes to clean, luckily I put down some white paper over the counters so I could just roll it up in a ball and throw it away making cleaning up a tiny bit easier.

I let the eggs sit for about three hours and then I started to realize that some were getting a little more saturated than I expected or wanted. I removed the eggs from the blueberry jar, grape juice jar, turmeric jar and spinach jar.

The spinach ones didn’t turn out at all because I kind of used more lettuce from a left over salad than spinach…oops. Ha. So I made a second attempt at creating a green color. I mixed the left over blueberry solution and turmeric solution and let a few eggs soak in it overnight. I also left the red cabbage to soak in the refrigerator overnight.

I wanted to build a wooden basket that was rustic and fill it with eggs that were colored with earthy tones. The colors turned out a little brighter than I expected, more like I collected them from my pet chicken that came straight out of a Skittles commercial, but oh well, they are still pretty.

My impromptu green solution worked really well. I got a really dark green. Almost too dark, so I mixed in a little red cabbage solution into the existing mixture and soaked two more eggs in it for about 15 minutes and it gave me the light green that I wanted.

The eggs that soaked overnight in the refrigerator in the red cabbage mixture definitely gave the best color. And my mind is still blown that this pretty color came from red cabbage. I didn’t quite strain all the cabbage out well enough so some pieces of cabbage got stuck to the eggs while it was soaking but it created a cool pattern.

To avoid spending any money on the basket filler, I just ran a few pieces of various shades of brown colored construction paper through a paper shredder. I put a piece of cardboard in the basket and covered it with the shredded paper so the eggs would sit higher up in the basket.

PIN FOR LATER