Upcycled Salt Shaker

Woke up this morning to beautiful fluffy clouds and patches of bright blue sky.  It wasn't long until those clouds turned dark and threatening.  There is a definite chill in the air, snow is at pretty low elevations which always make the valley really feel the chill.

I keep looking out the window at my poor garden, so much storm damage to clean up if the weather decides to warm up.  Usually by this time of the year I have Spring flowers planted.  But not this year with all the rain and cold.  Either we will have a late Spring or the weather will make a quick change and the warm weather will return before we know what is happening.

Another good day to work inside.

I found this pretty little lonely salt shaker for 25¢ at a vintage sale .  It was just too pretty to leave behind.

I planned to make a tassel with this one.

I searched my stash for fibers and trims.

Next I tore several pieces of muslin fabric into about 1/2" strips by about 8".

And also gathered a few very small flat back pearls about 2MM size.

I measured a piece of the cream trim about 3 times as long as the salt shaker and threaded both ends through the center hole in the top.  Then I pulled them out the bottom with a pair of tweezers being careful not to pull them out of the top hole.  Once the ends were out the bottom I temporarily tied a small piece of fiber around the loop  at the top to stop it from pulling out while I created the tassel on the bottom.

Then working at the bottom I laid the fibers across the bottom of the shaker and tied them in place with a square knot using the fibers extending from the top out the bottom.

Next I trimmed all the fibers to the same length.

before I trimmed the fibers

I used my hot glue gun to attach my layers of trims beginning with the green layer, then the pink fringe, then the beige trim.

Then I glued on the gold ribbon round the edge above the trim and finally a piece of black velvet tubing to finish off the trim.

The final step was to glue one pearl to cover each of the holes in the top of the shaker.

That is it.  Just fluffed the fibers at the bottom and hung my new tassel on my china cabinet knob.

This was a good project to use up a lot of tiny left over trims from other projects.  Most the pieces I used were under 6" long.

Happy Crafting!