Easy DIY Tassel Key Chain

While I was organizing the fish room (I still need to show you a tour of the finished room!), I came across so many craft supplies that I had forgotten about.  Having everything in one lovely space, in beautifully organized Ikea cabinets no less, has really sparked my creativity and I decided to challenge myself to use up some of these sidelined supplies.  I have been quite the prolific crafter lately, and I can't wait to show you everything I've made!

Today I'm sharing this sweet and simple DIY tassel key chain.  

This project is using up a supply that will really date me: embroidery thread.  I found a big bag of it, but it's not from my abandoned embroidery project.  Nope, it's from those ubiquitous knotted friendship bracelets - when they were trendy the first time around.  I've been really loving the tassel trend, but couldn't think of where I wanted a tassel (pillows? throw blanket? nope - can't be anywhere the puppers can reach).  Then I came across my collection of vintage skeleton keys (they used to be framed) and it suddenly dawned on me:  make some cute tassel key chains or purse fobs!  As luck would have it, I also happened to have two large bead caps that I had purchased about 15 years ago for another project and these caps made the finished tassels look very polished.

When I was done, I had re-purposed a lot of pretty bits and bobs, which were all collecting dust, into two pretty key chains - one for my Mom and one for me.

If you want to add some flair to your keys or purse, here's what you'll need to make a large embroidery thread tassel.

Supplies:

• Embroidery thread (I used three skeins per tassel)
• Large bead cap (mine is approx. 1" L x 3/4" W)
• Small bead (optional)
• Eye pin
• Small jump rings
• Key ring
• Vintage skeleton key (optional - you can add any charm, or no charm) 
• Needle nose pliers 
• Sharp scissors

Although you can make a tassel by simply folding a skein in half, I wanted to really mix the different colored threads together.  My Mom offered up a second set of hands and I wound the thread into a loop, working the coppery hue evenly in with my bright aqua.

Then I folded the loop we formed in half and tied it tightly with a length of embroidery floss.  I wrapped it a few times, tied it, then kept wrapping and tied it again so the knot was secure.  Then I just let the ends of the knot blend into the rest of the threads.

 

Before moving on to the next step, I grabbed the sharpest scissors in my arsenal and trimmed the edges.  Five or six times.  There's always that one that thread skips a trim!  Luckily I am a pro at this, because it seems like I always need to re-trim my hair when I come home from the hair salon.

I opened up the loop on my eye pin and slipped on the thread before closing the loop with needle nosed pliers:   

Then I added my bead cap and a turquoise bead at the end (optional), before cutting the end of the eye pin shorter and forming a loop with my needle nose pliers.  I have a great how-to for creating eye pin loops in my tutorial for beaded Christmas spiders, linked here.

I added a jump ring, which I connected to a slightly larger jump ring, which was then attached to my vintage skeleton key.  Easy peasy!  I added a key ring and was happy to add a splash of aqua to my truck keys (which were worryingly devoid of my favorite hue). 

For my Mom's blue ombre embroidery thread tassel, I used a ball chain instead of a key ring:

I love the embroidery thread tassel on its own, but the addition of a vintage skeleton key is fun - and I get to use pieces of my collection!  Skeleton keys have always fascinated me, but my framed collection didn't really jibe with the beachy look I'm cultivating in the lakehouse so I had packed them away.  It's nice to be able to enjoy them again. 

Plus there's something really soothing about smoothing out the strands of the embroidery floss - it's kind of like a stress ball.  When I hold my keys, I started to calmly fiddle with the strands and it's interestingly meditative; it makes me feel very chill.  

   
If I can find some more bead caps, I'd love to use up the rest of the embroidery floss and vintage keys to make these key chains as gifts - I already have a couple of friends dropping heavy hints...

P.S. you can also purchase a cute tassel key chain, like this adorable one with a horse, this chic leather one, or this cute monogram version.

Trash Talking

I've had to adjust, moving from a city of nearly a million people to a municipality of only a few thousand.  Sure, there's a proper city within an hour's drive but with only about 100,000 residents, it's small potatoes.  I've been meaning to write more about this ongoing transition, but a lot of what I've had to adjust to has turned out to be far more enjoyable than expected, and I've easily slipped into new routines that now seem so comfortable and natural. 

One change still feels kind of weird: dealing with our garbage.  When I hear couples argue about who brought the garbage cans back from the curb, who left the lids off and whose responsibility it is to move those cans twenty feet, I want to knock their heads together.  Hubs and I (although sometimes it's just me), collect, bag and tag our garbage and then drive it many kilometers to our municipal landfill, which has somewhat inconvenient and limited hours.  Each tag costs 50 cents, but we get an annual allotment plus a free bag tag for each bag of recycling we bring in.  It's an open pit landfill, with black bears strolling around.  We stand in the back of our truck and heave our bags so they fly as far as possible into the pit. 

Sometimes it smells, as you might expect, and it's normally super muddy, but in the winter it's not so bad.  At first I was horrified by this process, but now, even though it still feels strange, I've grown to like this household chore and I loiter there more than Hubby would like.  There's something kind of powerful about seeing all of this garbage against a beautiful, rural backdrop.  It's eery and horrifying, but in some ways strangely beautiful.  In the city, folks are so removed from the collective amount of waste produced, thanks to door to door trash collection, but also because the landfill in our nearest city is a giant trash compactor and you don't see anything but a large silver machine.  It seems so neat and tidy.  Here, though, it's just heaped and sometimes the wind takes pieces, obscuring a beautiful landscape.  It makes me really mindful of the garbage we produce.  I hope it's encouraging Hubby and I to produce less waste - we definitely produce less than when we lived in the townhouse.  It certainly makes me think more about garbage.

On an uplifting note, the picking is awesome.  There's a shed for people to leave things for free, and I've scored mittfuls of vintage goodies - incuding turquoise Pyrex (I've left treasures too).  On instagram I hashtag these finds #goodneighbourshed, but I've only shared a few finds.  I've absconded with quite a bit more than I've let on.  I have yet to pluck something from the actual landfill, but there was a box of vintage dishware - just out of reach - that had me thinking about wading in.

The Good Neighbour Shed!

After we moved into the lakehouse, we devised a system for garbage that was not totally unlike what we used before.  In Ottawa we had a garbage bin and then a black bin and blue bin for recycling.  Here we bought a huge new garbage can that holds colossal GLAD bags so we can cram in as much garbage as possible - I really cling to those 50 cent bag tags (could I be any more miserly?).  We bought another huge can for blue bag recycling.  I re-use a carboard box for paper recycling to save a blue bag (miserly!).  Inside the house, a cute aqua bin collects recycling under the kitchen sink, and I bring it outside to sort almost everyday (I try to make trips outside with Szuka fruitful, much to her chagrin - she'd rather we just play).  I haven't really devised a good system for our garbage inside.  Our old step-can was in the way in our small kitchen and so I used a random lid-less can I found in the house, that the old owner's left behind.  I stuffed it underneath the kitchen sink when we were working on the house, and there it stayed.  At one point I used GLAD kitchen catchers but when they ran out, I started stuffing various plastic bags I accumulated into the empty box.  It seemed cheaper, but these bags often leaked and some were a tight fit for the can.

When GLAD offered to send me some product and sponsor a post on trash talking, I was happy for an excuse to ramble on about our landfill and the weirdness of handling our own trash to such an extent, but I was a bit reluctant to use the kitchen catchers.  Surely what I was using was just as good?  And free!  Well, the odor-guard kitchen catchers have sure come along way since I bought my last box.  These new odour-guard bags with Febreeze are fabulous because although they smell perfumed coming out of the box, once they've been in the bin they don't smell flowery.  Instead, they neutralize any odor really well, without just masking it.  It was never atrocious under there because I take the garbage out to garage regularly, but it is garbage so it didn't smell like roses.  After testing these bags for weeks, I don't smell anything!  It just smells clean under the sink - these bags are perfect for use with my open can.  And they fit the can with room to spare - no more leaks thanks to too-tight bags splitting.  I'm sold.

I haven't tried the compostable bags because we don't compost.  Isn't that horrible?  I feel a lot of guilt about that.  I didn't realize until recently that our dump has a compost section.  I thought we had to compost ourselves, and with my lack of interest in gardening, Szuka the digger, and our bear problem, composting seemed like a nightmare.  I'll have to make some room under the sink for a compost pail and start!

This post was sponsored by GLAD and I also received product to try out.  The idea for this post and all words and photos are my own - as is the embarrassment I endured taking photos at the dump.  I wasn't super keen on showing you the under the sink area, because its only redeeming features are that it's clean (go me!) and it boasts a pretty a pretty aqua can (thanks Umbra!).  I have not washi taped or pattern papered anything.  Bad blogger!  While garbage and garbage accoutrements are certainly not the sexiest topics to blog about, particularly in the absence of any beautification, products that make our day to day lives a little nicer are worth their weight in gold! I'm happy for this opportunity to re-think what products I'm using. Maybe getting stuck with my garbage for a month won't be quite so smelly this summer? Stupid landfill hours.

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