Tutorial Week: Cranberry Tassel

Tutorial Week Day 3: So I about wrote this really lame Cranberry/Turkey/Thanksgiving pun, but I resisted. Can you believe Turkey day is tOmMoRw? I'm so not ready! Better hit the grocery store. ugh! Sorry, today I have the much requested Cranberry Tassel Tutorial for you. The tassel I made for the tutorial is slightly different than the original, but I like it better! Anyways, off we go!

Supplies:

• Cranberry Star Ornament (I got it at the dollar store)
• rotary fabric cutter (or you can use a yardstick and scissors)
  
• scissors
  
• white burlap
• hot glue gun
• small plastic bottle that you can cut up
• coordinating ribbon
• 6" of thin gauge wire 
  
• wire cutters (c'mon girls, get them REAL tools out! lol)

First you'll cut off the strange wired greenery at the top of your star with your wire cutters. (yours may not have it) To do this, I had to remove a couple "cranberries". Save them.

Now hot glue that "cranberry" or two to cover the greenery's spot. (if  the spot isn't quite covered, don't worry, a little later we'll take off a couple more berries that you can put there.)

Next you'll cut your burlap for the tassel. Be sure to lightly spray it with a water bottle before hand. This really does help with the mess. Trust me! You'll cut 1" strips across the entire length of your burlap. (I think it's 36"?)

I cut 5 strips, but only used 4.

Now start with one end of one burlap strip and start looping it around.

When your tassel looks the way you want it to, hold the top in place....

and wrap your 6" of wire around the top to hold the burlap strips in place. Try to wrap the wire close to the top so that it won't show later. Feel free to tweak your strips and arrange them. When you wrap the wire around the bundle, it changes how they fall a little.

Next you'll make your tassel topper. Cut your plastic bottle in half or so. (I used the wire cutters to do this.) You want your bottle to be about 1" tall.

 

 Now hot glue ribbon around your bottle.

Cover the top of the bottle with ribbon as well because it will show a little.

Put plenty of hot glue on the inside of the bottle and stick the top of the burlap bundle in. Hold in place until the glue cools. Be sure that the wire around the burlap isn't showing.

You'll then hot glue the cranberry star onto your topper. I removed a couple berries so that the tassel fit snug in the star. You can glue these to the top as well.

And there you go!

Just for comparison, here's the original Cranberry Tassel:

Better picture (and lighting) by far! oh well. I didn't have time for a better pic of my tutorial tassel.

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