Tassel Tutorial

I did a post on some of the many tassels that I have made, and you can see that post here. Several people asked me if I would do a tutorial on tassel making, so today I will show you how I made these two tassels in less than 1 hour.

First, you need to select something that you want to make a tassel out of. You can make a tassel out of just about anything. I selected a paper mache bunny and a 25¢ garage sale bell with a rose painted on it.

I will concentrate on the bell first. You need to be able to tie a ribbon from your object to hang when it's completed. Luckily, the bell had two small holes in the upper back where the ringer inside is attached.

 

I cut the string off and took out the ball from inside.

Supplies needed are a button, decorative or plain paper, old spool that you would normally throw away, the bell in my case and 1/4 inch ribbon.

I threaded my ribbon through the two holes in the button, through the paper, through the spool and up through the bell and out those two holes in a loop fashion. Both ends of the ribbon should come out the top.  I did use hot glue on the paper before I quickly pulled the string tight. By threading this ribbon all the way through everything will hold the whole tassel together. The decorative paper is there for when someone turns the tassel over (to inspect your craftsmanship), they would see a cute button and pretty paper.

I then glued the spool to the bell using hot glue. This just keeps it stable because it wanted to rock inside the bell.

This is where you can get creative. Gather together your supplies for what you want the tassel made from. In this case, I wanted fringe as a base, then ribbon and finally a piece of feather boa was used. This is also a good way to use up scrap ribbon since it doesn't take much.

Start layering using the hot glue gun.

For the ribbons, you can use them straight or bend in two, hot glue ends together and then glue the tops to the spool. It just depends on the look you want. For calculating the size, I just held up the ribbon to the spool and sighted a measurement where I would glue it and where I wanted the ribbon to end. If you are doing looped ribbon, loop four ribbons first all the same size then glue them on the spool one at a time going around the spool. You will be building layers up the spool from the bottom to the top.

Keep layering. Your next row of ribbons would need to be glued in the open spaces between the previous ribbons.

When you get to the top of the spool, your final layer should be something that would go around vs. hang down. I used the feather boa piece for this.

Final step was to add a bow to the ribbon up top to make it look pretty. This is an area where you can do whatever floats your boat. Be creative.

Okay, back to the bunny. He didn't have any way for me to thread a ribbon all the way through him, so I used a screw eye, screwed and glued between his ears.

I did the spool, button and paper method the same way, but instead, I just glued the spool and ribbon to the under side of the bunny.  I did some of the same techniques as the bell, but I put the fringe over some ribbon instead of first and I also have some ribbon straight instead of all of them looped. Like I said, this is the creative fun part.

 

I added a bow at the finished area on the upper spool with a lace scrapbooking embellishment. This is the area where something needs to go around the upper spool to hide the last row of looped ribbon. Lastly, I simply tied a ribbon through the eye hook between his ears and he is finish and ready for Easter! If you don't have an empty spool, you can buy little wooden spools at the craft store in the unfinished wood aisle.

Tassels can be made in various ways. I have just shown you ONE way to easily build a tassel tail by just gluing layers of ribbon or fringe on a spool.

Please try this. It is not only fun and creative, but inexpensive and impressive. Hang it from a door knob, a dresser knob, a curtain, a lid on the wall like I did or just anywhere. Trust me, these are so easy, you will get addicted!!

NOTE: You should be able to click on most of the pictures to enlarge to see further details.
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