Burden baskets come from various Native American culture. They were used for gathering crops and once a woman returned home she would hang her basket on the front door. Native American’s consider their home a sacred space and the basket was a symbol that visitors were to leave all worries, anger and other negative emotions in the basket before entering in order to protect the space. The saying “leave your burdens at the door” originated from these baskets.
If you enjoy this check out our Butterfly Dream Catcher and Our Inspirational Dream Catcher Vision Board.
Burden Basket Supplies
- Small roundish basket to fit on an 8×10 plaque (4″ or 5″ high) You can find these easily at thrift stores!
- 8×10 wood plaque
- Paint
- Sharpie Paint Pens OPTIONAL I used them for the smaller triangles to make nice lines.)
- Mod Podge
- Sawtooth Picture Hangers OPTIONAL
- Feathers
- Embroidery Floss (OPTIONAL if desired to wrap feathers)
- Hot Glue
- Printable poem below
Poem Download
You can get the poem in various forms included in our free download below.
Instructions
Gather your supplies. We cut the handles of the basket we found. It was 4.5″ tall afterwards.
Our 8×10 plaque was purchased at Hobby Lobby. Even at regular price they are inexpensive. Michael’s and some Walmart’s carry them also.
You can paint your plaque however you like. We went with a tribal geometric design and marked off the plaque where we would paint. 
Measure each side area and paint the colors of your choice.
Using paint with a little added water, paint triangles onto the basket. 
Cut out the poem that you choose.
Mod Podge the poem on and then over the entire plaque. 
A paint pen can help get straighter edges depending on the surface of your basket. 
Use a sufficient amount of hot glue to affix the basket to the plaque below the poem.
Our first choice would have been longer feathers with darker tips but this is all we could find. We used some very watered down paint to paint the tips of them. They turned out fine!
We held them together with a tiny dab of hot glue, then wrapped them with embroidery thread. 
We keep these sawtooth hangers to use for plaques. All you do is hammer them in!
Hang your plaque on your front door or beside it where everyone can see before they enter in.
