Tassel earrings are all over the place at the moment and it's so easy to make your own.

This tutorial was originally posted in 2018 and has now been updated:

I was off to a wedding a couple of weeks ago and was just getting my outfit organised on the morning, ironing my dress, deciding on my shoes etc and realised I didn't really have any earrings that would go with my outfit.

So I did what any self respecting crafter would do and made some!

How to make your own tassel earring

This is a really quick craft, it will take you longer to get everything out and put it away again than to actually do the making - honest!

To make your own tassel earrings you will need:

Hoop Earrings - mine are some I've had forever, they were my Mum's from back in the 70's but any hoops you have will do.
Embroidery Thread any kind will be fine
Jump Rings - mine were 7mm and were just about right, any smaller and you may have problems threading them on. If you have larger jump rings I'd just say make your tassels thicker by using more thread
Superglue
Jewellery pliers
Sharp scissors

I didn't have an exact colour match of thread for my dress (and no time to go shopping!) so I mixed a few colours of thread, I love the result but if you can get thread in a perfect match that would work well too.

How to make the tassel with embroidery floss

Cut several lengths of embroidery thread approx 1 metre. I cut 3 lengths, one of each colour I was mixing.

Separate each of the 6 strands of embroidery thread and then lay them together. This seems like a faff but it makes the tassel fuller and hang more evenly so I think it's worth it.

I used 9 strands like this together for each tassel, you can see the mix of colours:

Grab something that is approx 5cm (2") wide and wrap the thread around and around. I used the bag my jump rings came in as it was to hand but a piece of card would work just as well. Just make sure the ends of the thread start and finish at the bottom.

Slide the roll of thread off the bag or card and take a short spare length of thread and pop it through the top of the loop to hold everything in place.

Slide 3 jump rings onto the single thread and down onto the looped bundle of threads. Add a blob of super glue to hold the jump rings about 1/2 cm from the top and give it a moment to dry.

Open another jump ring and pop it through the loop at the top, then close it back up.

The single thread you had added just helps to thread on the other jump rings and keep the gap in the top of the tassel open, once you've added the extra jump ring you can discard that extra bit of thread.

Trim the end of the tassel.

Now just make another exactly the same.

Attaching the tassel to your earring

Now all you need to do is slide them onto your hoop earrings. My hoops are smooth and don't have any kind of catch on them so this was easy. If you had hoops with more of a catch you could always add another larger jump ring between your earring and the jump ring on the tassel.

Here's a dreadful bathroom selfie of me wearing the earrings at the wedding!

Can we all see that my dress is pink? I had quite a few people comment on the night about my red dress! It's pink - definitely pink! The threads ended up being quite a good colour match too.

More ways to adapt this idea to make tassel earrings

They were so quick and easy, I'm now thinking I could make several in different colours so I have a pair to match all my outfits! You could add more than one tassel to each hoop, maybe in different colours, that would be fun. Oh the possibilities :-) You could add a whole rainbow of tassels if you like.

Maybe cut your tassels much shorter or much longer? Add some beads?

If you don’t have suitable hoop earrings you can very easily add a regular earring finding of your choice to the top jump ring.

Update: I finally got around to making a couple more sets of tassels to add to my hoop earrings. I used a pearl thread this time and made some in my most favourite colour red, plus some in this variegated DMC pearl thread that feels to me like it has a unicorn vibe to it.

Using ready made tassels to make earrings

You can make earrings like this with ready made tassels too. A few weeks ago I was removing the awkwardly placed tassels from this summery top that I picked up at a charity shop, they were sewn into the seam and took a little bit of unpicking (details are all on my Insta if you are interested) but 2 of the 4 tassels were saveable so a quick jump ring through the top of the loop and I now have earrings to match my thrifted top - yay! Waste not want not as my grandma always said.

Julie

I’ll be sharing this project up at these link ups.