Friday 6 January 2012

Giant Curtain Tassel

Happy New Year everyone! I've been a bit MIA over the past few weeks, but I'm back now!

One of the crafts I wanted to do for the Pinterest Challenge was make a big tasselled curtain tieback, inspired by the giant tassels I saw on The Autocrat!
Back then I didn’t have the time or materials to make one.

Until now:



And here’s the awesome tassel that I pinned:



Isn’t it fantastic?! I love the creativity in this; all the extra touches like the beads and luxurious mix of patterns and colours really make it special!


As for me, I had to work with what I had lying around...


It took me a while to work out how I was going to make mine. Hayley at The Autocrat wrote that the giant tassels had a water bottle in the centre, but also linked to a Hobby Lobby how-to.
I looked at Hobby Lobby’s instructions and decided their way wasn’t entirely for me (I didn’t have half of what they said I needed) so I went the water bottle route, too, and muddled along until I got the result I was after!

Basically, I used the top part of a 500ml water bottle:


To make an inner row on the tassel, I cut out the middle of the bottle and made a slit up the middle.


I then stapled it at a slight angle before hot gluing on the strips of ribbon.

After that I hot glued this inside piece to the inside of the first section of bottle.

Note: Plastic bottles don’t like hot glue! I did have some trouble with warping when I glue things together!

The rest of the bottle was made mainly in the way Hobby Lobby explained, but with the plastic bottle instead of the polystyrene ball.


For a final touch, I decided to put more lengths of fabric in the centre. I cut some length of purple cord and tied them to a large D ring.



I then popped the tassels and D ring through the centre of the tassel, from the top, and looped some cord through.



Instead of using a tassel topper I used a metal thing that I found in a box of junk. I threaded the cord through the centre top to bottom and then again bottom to top, to make two loops on the top of the tassel. I tied the ends around the D ring underneath before gluing the metal part down.



My curtain has needed a tie back for 9-10 years. Oops?!
I only made one tassel (rather than a pair) since the curtain on the opposite side of the room goes behind a shelf when I draw it back!

This tassel cost me nothing—everything I used was to hand. The plastic bottle was waiting to be recycled, the ribbons came from my Nanny, the purple cord used to be a skirt and everything else was either left over from old projects or lying around the house! Hurrah for free stuff!


Linking up at the parties in the sidebar!

3 comments:

  1. Just what I like- trash to treasure. It looks amazing!

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  2. Great job, even better it didn't cost anything. I didn't know about the Pinterest challenge. But you did one pretty looking tassel! Pretty clever using the water bottle! Thanks for sharing your creativeness over at Sunday's Best!

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  3. Oh my gosh! I love it :)
    Thanks so much for linking up to Fresh Fridays on Release Me Create!!

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Reading all your sweet comments makes me happy! :) I appreciate each and every one and try to reply to all that I can!

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