I love the look of glass and wire in the garden so today’s Weekend Project is about making embellished metal baskets with glass beads. These baskets are ornamental as well as functional. Use them to hold shell or rock collections in the garden, or keep them by the veggie garden or chicken coop for collecting produce or eggs.
This clam basket has been outside in my gardens for about ten years. Clamming baskets hold up so well outdoors.
Here’s what you need:
Wire – 22 guage or slightly finer. This can be copper, brass, or any other metal. Even wire that will eventually rust looks good.
A Wire Basket – This can be a clam basket or an egg basket or any other wire bin.
Glass beads of your choice. (You can also use shells, metal beads, ceramic etc. Go nuts!) Bigger beads are faster and easier to work with.
A wire cutter.
These baskets are a great way to use assorted glass beads that might be left over from other projects.
- Cut a length of wire that’s about 5 feet long. String about 12” of beads on that wire, bending one end up so that the beads don’t fall off as you string them.
String a line of beads on a wire that’s at least 5x longer than the length of beads. One at a time slide beads into place and twist the wire.
- Starting at one end, take a bead and twist it. You can twist it just once around, or twist several times to make a spiral “post” that holds the wire out from the basket.
- Do them all the same or vary the number of twists.
- After twisting the first bead, slide the next one to about an inch from the first and twist it in place. You can keep it further away or closer, depending on the number of beads you are using and how you want the finished piece to look.
- Keep working down the length of the wire twisting the beads into place.
Make enough lengths of wired beads you need to add to the basket in the way you wish. Beads can be all different or use lots of the same size and color.
- Be sure to leave about two inches of wire at each end to attach the piece to your basket.
- Once you have a length of beads on a wire, attach this to the basket. You can wrap it around the rims or wire it up against any part of the basket. Keep making more lengths of twisted beads and attaching them until you are finished with your design.
One way of putting the wired beads on the basket is to wind them around the top rim.
You can stretch the wired beads along any of the basket ribs without winding them for a more delicate look.
This basket was painted green. Next I attached a length of chandelier chain to the middle. Last year this basket was in the garden, filled with broken shells.
On this multicolored basket I used copper wire but you can use any wire for this project.
Beaded baskets can be added to any grouping in the garden.
Clam baskets can hold pine cones, ceramic balls, sea shells etc, with or without bead embellishing.
