Celebration Tassel Garland

The 2013 countdown begins...

I've been pintresting tassel garlands for a while now - trying to find ways to include them in my decorating, but not really having any reasons to ... until now!  New Year.  Although I am not a huge New Year celebration-type, I love acknowledging the New Year and I always set myself a theme for the year, whether it be as boring as 'being more organised', or 'getting my finances in order', to 'running a marathon' [this years goal and achieved - or maybe it should be 'run, jog and walk a marathon'?]

I'm still trying to decide for 2013, but in the meantime and with the miserable December weather keeping me indoors, I decided to give the tassel garland a go and show you the results:

What I Used:

Crepe Paper [89p per pack from here]

Scissors

String

Paper Mache Numbers [99p each in the sale here]

I decided to create my tassels from crepe paper - the texture and thickness makes it a little like thin fabric and it doesn't break or tear like tissue paper, so can withstand my constant mind changing when decorating and making things!  

To start, I used the folds in the paper as my guide and cut around three folds width of the crepe paper:

and folded it in half, lengthways and then continued in half again and again until I could fold no more:

... I cut to length the string/ribbon [or in my case, wool] to thread my tassels on to and to use to
hang as a banner and then folded the paper in the centre:

 To fix my tassels, I decided to loop them on to the string.  This was so that I can move the tassels along the string if I want to change the gaps between tassels and as although it secures the tassels to the string, it's not permanent.  

If you want some short-cuts to fixing the tassels, you could staple them around 2cm from the fold down through the crepe paper and wool, or fold the tassel over the string, twist to secure and fix in place, either with glue, cellotape or by making a tie and feature with ribbon and a bow.  

Placing the fold under the string, thread the ends over the string, through the loop and then pull tightly to secure the tassel in place:

 To create the tassels, take a pair of scissors and holding one half, cut from bottom to top in thin strips, stopping just before the loop [waiting until now to cut the tassel ends makes the process 100 times easier and less fiddly] - repeat on the other side and when finished, shake out to separate the tassels:

 ...and there you have it, a fixed crepe paper tassel.  I made a few more in white and silver and bunched them together to create my garland.  I found a pack of crepe paper made 4 tassels in each colour:

 To create my banner for New Year, I picked these numbers up in the HobbyCraft sale.  I decided to leave them plain as they fitted in with the overall theme [though, truth be told, I wanted to cover them with glitter!] and I also have another use for the 2 and 1 very soon:

 ... and stuck them to the string with cellotape along the back:

 ...before deciding I could not leave the tassels as they were.  It's the fastening to the string - annoying.  I found them quite hard to arrange in a neat, tidy way and I think they look a little unfinished.

So, I decided to test covering the fastening with a little crepe paper to cover:

...before deciding to use my favourite technique and created myself a star template, drawing around on to card and then tracing the lines [sort of] with my [BFF's] glitter glue pens, leaving to dry...

...and then cutting out, filling in with block colouring pencils and attaching to the fastening to cover and create little shooting star / fireworks:

...which I thought neatened it up a bit and helped finish the overall theme.

You can create these with any combination of colours, textures and sizes - I'm hoping to make some as chair backs for a party coming soon, so will also link and post to that when done!

I'm going to be away over the next week, so wish you a Happy, Happy New Year and will be back on the 7th January 2013 with a New Year, New Craft hope that should keep me occupied - Cheers!

[If you are seeing in the New Year with some fireworks, you might fancy giving my edible sparklers a go?!]

 

Don't forget, you can follow me on Pintrest:

and Twitter!

Tweets by @ThingsSheMakes