Tassel Bird Pendant Tutorial

I have been obsessing over tassels lately - from cute and trendy to elegant and flapper-inspired. Tassels have been showing up in jewelry designs forever but they have been enjoying a resurgence and have been shown in quite a few jewelry designs on runways recently. So after looking over some Pinterest inspirations I decided to give it a try and share how you can whip these fun little tassels up for your jewelry.

You'll need:

6 strands of 18" of embroidery floss

1 strand of 12" of embroidery floss

1 1/2" by 1" piece of cardboard

Sharp scissors

15mm jumpring 

1. Start with the floss at the bottom of the cardboard, wrap around until you reach the end of the floss. Trim the floss if it doesn't end at the bottom so that both the start and end of the floss are at the bottom of the cardboard. 

2. Hold on to the bottom of the tassel, insert the jumpring at the top of the loops, making sure it goes through the all the threads. Close the jump ring. 

3. Remove floss from cardboard.

4. With small piece of floss, wrap several times around the top of the tassel, under the jumpring. Tie very tight, wrap around one more time and tie again in a double knot. Trim ends of tied floss. 

5. Cut the loops at the bottom of the tassel, trim the ends so the tassel is even at the bottom. Really sharp scissors are key at this step! 

The pendant is created using 8" of 20 gauge wire. I wire wrapped a loop, added the round bead, faceted bronze spacer, disk bead, 5mm flat spacer, bird bead and created a wrapped loop on top. I added a faceted bead on a 7mm jumpring at the bottom of the bird loop. I attached two 12" lengths of copper chain with a 7mm jumpring to the top of the pendant. The clasp was attached with a 7mm jumpring. 

I thought this was a fun project to showcase my new Bird Spring Mix sets that have the Wedgwood inspired beads since they are so colorful and would look great with a tassel design.

Customize it:

You could make a tassel of leather, waxed linen, chain and even gemstones.

Use colors to match your beads or use one color.

Add in metallic embroidery floss for a little sparkle or use only metallic floss for a metal look.

Wrap the top in a contrasting color for a pop.

Rsources: 

Bird sets can be found in my Etsy shop.

25 tassel inspirations - including a few more tutorials. 

Jumprings: Vintaj