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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.