Mother's Day Gift - Woven Basket

Tristan is still working on some Mother's Day gift for Grandma. Today we worked on clay woven basket. Before we made the basket we had to make the salt dough. The recipe for the salt dough is listed here.

Tristan wanted the woven basket to be purple, so we used food coloring to dye the dough purple.
What we used:

1 batch of salt dough
Rolling pin
Toothpicks
Table knife
Cookie sheet
Food Coloring (you could just paint it afterwords)

1. Tristan rolled out the salt dough about 1/4" thickness.

2. Cut out a 3" circle for the bottom of the basket, and place it on a cookie sheet.

3. Around the edge of the clay circle, he inserted toothpicks about 1/2" apart

4. Then we cut the remaining dough into strips, about 1/2" wide.


5. With some guidance, we weaved the strips in and out of the toothpicks


6. To create a rim and handle by making twisted clay ropes and attaching them to the top of the basket. We actually didn't attach the handle until later.








7. We then shaped the handle and just sat it on the cookie sheet.


8. Place the cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven and cooked it for about 15 minutes.
Then with some extra dough we had, I took the cookie sheet out (be careful, this part can be very hot), and attached the handle to the basket. Then placed it back in the over for another 30 minutes.