Wicker Woes: No More Flimsy Baskets
How many different Easter baskets did my kids have over the years? Several! It seems like we were buying new ones every year. Either they were flimsy and fell to pieces, or they were used as toy and closet storage until they fell apart. None of them lasted very long.
An Alternative
A few years ago, my daughter asked if I could help turn some metal buckets into Easter baskets for the grandbabies. She had grown tired of the virtually disposable, store-bought baskets. So, she found some small, galvanized pails. They were somewhere around 10 inches tall.
How Do You Beautify a Bucket?
We didn’t really know what we wanted to do to make them “Eastery,” so we consulted Pinterest for a while. Tractor themes seemed to be the going fad for boys. For girls, there were mostly unicorn and licensed character basket designs. To muddy the water as much as possible, we asked the kids what they wanted. At the time, my grandson was too young to tell us what he wanted, but the girls (ages 2 and 5) were delighted to have their ideas heard.
The Plan
The two girls threw out every character their tiny heads could have possibly held. Personally, I was hoping they’d settle on one animal or character. Unfortunately, they were very specific about their final decisions. They each wanted a bunny, a unicorn, a mermaid, and their own face painted on their new Easter bucket/baskets. The image that I devised was a combo-creature, but cute, nonetheless. It was a unibunnimaid. Or was it a merbunnicorn? I’m not sure what to call the things that I painted on these buckets. They turned out kind of cute, though.
My daughter made the decision to just go with a truck on my grandson’s pail. Whew!
Making It Work
I did a bit of Googling to see if it was going to be difficult to get paint to stick to the surface of these buckets. According to many people, paint will never stay on galvanized metal. Others advised different ways to wash away a powdery substance that is used to coat the exterior of anything galvanized. What I decided to do was to give the buckets an initial scrub with good old reliable Dawn dish detergent. After that, I wiped them down with rubbing alcohol to remove anything greasy or oily that might act as a barrier to my paint.
Now I was ready to paint. I began with a sprayed-on coat of white primer inside and outside. Then I sprayed a base coat of a pastel color onto the exterior of each bucket. One was lavender, another was pink, and the third was an aqua blue. I allowed the paint to cure for a day before I added the images.
Adding the Art
Cambree, my oldest granddaughter, wanted the lavender pail. So, on the front, I painted a girl with brown eyes and long brown hair to look like her. In the girl’s hands was a sign with Cambree’s name on it. To meet the requirements of including a bunny and a unicorn, I painted a headband onto the girl that included both a unicorn’s horn and bunny ears. The small portion of the girl’s lower body visible on the front of the pail was painted with mermaid tail scales. On the reverse side of the bucket, I painted a mermaid’s scaly tale and a few bubbles.
The pink pail was for Hadlee. She was only two years old and just happy to have something just like her big sister. Her Easter bucket was painted to match her sister’s, but her special character was given blue eyes and adorable blonde pigtails.
Colton’s bucket was given a big blue monster truck with his name on it. In the truck’s bed was a wooden cross, a giant carrot, and an Easter egg.
Making It Last
In hopes of making the painted images on these buckets last as long as possible, I “clear-coated” them. I used a can of KRYLON UV-Resistant Clear Acrylic Coating spray. These Easter buckets have served their purpose for going on four years now. And I think they have helped to add a bit of cuteness to some lifelong memories for our family.