I have an addiction to post holiday sales.

Shortly following all the major holidays, leftover holiday merchandise goes on sale.  I'm sure this is not big news to any of you.  Most of the time it's kind of the dregs of the holiday stuff that nobody really wants or needs OR it's like 1 set of 10 cute beverage napkins that don't really cut it (you almost always need more than 10 - especially when you're talking beverage napkins).

After Easter this past year I checked out some of my favorite post-holiday-deals-shopping spots and found that it was mostly candy and plastic eggs that were left over.  God knows I don't need any candy in the house and I have PLENTY of plastic eggs (considering the ones from our attic in Syracuse haven't made it here yet so I had to buy all new eggs this year).  

However,  about a month after the sale (you know it is junk when it's still there a MONTH after the holiday), these cheesy easter baskets were still on the shelf, but marked down to $.10 each.  I knew I could do something with these (and secretly hoped I had a little girl that I could do something for because the hot pink color was great).

So... I took these (3 of them):

 and turned them into these (for the 4th of July):

(not so sure about the liners anymore...)

It was a pretty simple process-- take off the handles and spray paint the baskets.  

Some of the handles pulled out easily (remember they are REALLY cheesy)

Some required a little more work:

used a paring knife to loosen the weave to release the handle

But very quickly I had 3 square baskets without handles.  

Then came the spray painting.  (and yes-- I used the cheap stuff-- I think it's $1.97 a can at Walmart.  For anything better than $.10 Easter baskets I might have sprung for more expensive paint, but I figured I didn't have much to loose with these if it didn't come out great)

I knew the white one would take the most time/paint, but... holy cow-- it was kind of ridiculous.  I lost count as to how many coats I used.  Maybe 5?  Maybe more.  Could still probably use one more coat to get a crisp clean white, but spray painting is not so easy in an apartment complex without much private outside space.

First coat.  I was trying to do the right thing and do the "do multiple light coats instead of one heavy coat" technique.  As you will see-- that technique didn't last long.

Then the red (first coat):

And the blue covered VERY well with it's first coat. 

Second Coat.  See much of a difference.... Didn't think so.

For someone who doesn't like feet much, my feet seem to be in a lot of posts lately.  Gross.  Sorry.

Then I stopped taking pictures of each coat because I was getting frustrated and thinking it would take me a MONTH to get this one white, so here's how it ended up.

Remember, I had to do the backs too so... 5 coats on the front.  5 coats on the back. argh!

sorry tiny spot of white branches on the bush.  Oops.

You can see how REALLY it could use one more coat-- but I just couldn't do it.  I called it "close enough".  I have more paint so someday when I'm feeling especially motivated I might finish 'er off.

And since they weren't PERFECT, I decided I needed to do something more to distract the eye so I made little paper liners for them-- just using scrapbook paper and a star template. 

In the end I only really like the finished product look of the blue one (ack-- the white one gives me a headache), but the good news is that the paper liners are just set in the bottom of the basket so I can pull them out really easily and swap them for new ones if I prefer.  This also helps them to be more "universal" so I can do Christmas liners for the red and white ones at Christmas time, or a sports theme/logo one for the blue basket during football or basketball season.

So that's the little story of how I turned $.10 cheep Easter baskets (see what I did there. cheep -- Easter. funny?  no?  whatever) into baskets that I can get a lot of mileage out of.

Happy Belated Easter.  :)