Secret Santa Gift Basket

 I'm always finding cool baskets that would work really well as "purses" for various costuming events at the thrift store.  Since I already have...er...three? I like buying the ones I find now and giving them away as gifts.  For the secret santa this year, I gave the one above away.  Here's what it originally looked like.

Ummm...yeah.  The basket itself was fine.  Cute handle,  deep enough for a bunch of stuff like keys, cell phones, and emergency sewing kits,  but the lid....  I wanted to repaint it into something more historically appropriate.   I also wanted it to work somewhat with multiple eras since someone would be using it, hopefully, for everything from the Renn Faire to Victorian.  I bought some basic paint for 50 cents and just covered over the horrible snowman.   I made sure that the entire lid was thickly painted.  I then free painted the little fan in white once the black paint dried.  It's not the best painting by far but you can tell it's a fan and it's a vast improvement over the snowman, I think.

The original basket was only $1.90.  So, for under $3, I managed to make a fairly useful gift.  Of course, I put a brooch and a necklace in it too.   :-)