An Ombre Shoe Basket

A while back, I saw this post by Jenny at The Little Green Notebook that I thought was really interesting.  She took a West Elm basket and applied white paint to it in a gradient fashion.  Now, I'm not the biggest fan of spending $54 on a basket and then altering it, but when I found a nearly identical basket at Marshall's for $12.99, I thought I could give basket painting a try...after all, I've already painted curtains, painted a rug, and  I may have done something with those banana leaf World Market stools that I wrote about a couple months ago.  More on that later.

For now, I'm focusing on this basket:

Charm and I painted the basket together while Lucky was at Preschool last week.  We used flat white latex paint that I had on hand, a piece of tape as a guide for the top of the paint line, and then we just followed Jenny's instructions.  We dry brushed the paint on the entire area that we wanted paint on, and then put thicker paint on the bottom of the basket and blended the middle area.

The end result is a bit of a modern take on a traditional basket.  I thought about using a different paint color than the white that Jenny used, but I had plans for the basket in our mudroom which is staying pretty neutral. 

Our new basket will be replacing this overflowing shoe basket:

The ombre basket is a larger basket, but it's not too big.  It still easily fits into a little corner of our mudroom, and after removing all of our 'seasonal' shoes (swimming shoes, soccer shoes, etc.), there is a ton of room remaining in the basket.  (And there will be plenty of room for all those seasonal shoes when the reappear again in the spring:).)

The project took about 15 minutes total, even with my helper:).  He's very proud of the basket he painted, and I am too!!  

It feels good to cross that project off my list, especially since we've had the basket for a couple months now!!  Does that ever happen to you?  You have all the materials you need to complete a 15 minute project, yet it still takes months to complete?  Ahhh!!  I'm trying to tackle at least one small project like that per day around here, and as a result I have lots to write about!  Stay tuned...:).