I love tassel garlands. They are popping up all over the place from Target to Walmart! But if you are looking for a certain color scheme or particular length, making your own is easy. Most of the online tutorials I found call for using tissue paper. For our daughter’s graduation party, I wanted to make a tassel garland that was waterproof — just in case we had wet weather.
Here’s what we used to make them:
plastic rectangular tablecloths
curling ribbon
stapler
washi tape
rotary cutter and cutting mat
Each tablecloth makes about 22 tassels. We decided to make about 120 tassels in total to use on our giant balloons and to decorate the party space.
I purchased all of the plastic tablecloths at Party City, except for the peach color which I found online. By the way, Walmart and the Dollar Store have the best price of $1 if you are able to find your colors.
Here are the steps:
1. Unfold the tablecloth into 1 long continuous length that is 4 layers thick.
2. Cut along the folded edge that lies underneath the open edge of of the first 2 layers (this is hard to explain so look closely at the picture). This will result in two folded edges on the left and 4 cut edges on the right.
3. Then cut the tablecloth crosswise into 10 inch wide sections.
4. Take each 10 inch section, and starting from the open edges side, cut 1/2 inch wide strips, stopping about 2 inches from the other side.
5. Open up the section that has been cut into strips and pull apart the two layers like this.
6. You will have about 11 sections but they are double so that gives you 22 sections.
7. Take each section and fold it in half, and in half again, and in half again, continuing this way until the width is about 3/4 inch.
8. Fold the section in half and staple about an inch down from the top. We stapled it on both sides to be sure it was secure.
9. For the balloon garlands, we found it easier to attach the tassels to the garland before we attached the balloons. In this way, we could do them ahead of time and not have so much to do right before the party.
10. Tape a long section of curling ribbon or string to a wall. We made ours about 12 feet long.
11. Starting about 6 inches down from the top, tie the first tassel to the ribbon, using the ribbon itself to make a single loop and pull tightly to secure.
12. Then tie on the second tassel in the same way, about 3 inches down. Continue in this manner until you have the desired number of tassels on the ribbon.
We used about 15 tassels for each balloon. The length of our ribbon ended up being about 7 feet.
13. For the remaining tassels, we simply strung them on a length of jute twine. We gave them a more finished look by wrapping the staple with some metallic washi tape. We used the garlands to decorate our beverage stations and the card/gift table.
As it turned out, we had gorgeous weather and didn’t need weatherproof tassels after all. But an added benefit of plastic tassels is that they are fairly indestructible, so we kept them, thinking we can use some to add a little glam to Elizabeth’s dorm room!
