Dyeing Bottle Brush Trees

Hi everyone! Last year I did a "shiny and glittery" Christmas. This year's theme is "trees". So I'll be working on making all kinds of trees for the next few weeks. Look what you can do with those really inexpensive bags of bottle brush trees!

You can bleach them and then dye them any color you want! Here's Sarah's tutorial for making Halloween trees at Making Projiks. I think that she's been doing this as far back as 2006 so I do believe this is her original idea (correct me if I'm wrong).

This bag has 21 trees in it in several sizes and most craft stores have them on sale now or you can use your 40% off coupon. Be sure you get this one. I only wanted a few trees last year and I got a smaller bag - they looked the same-after using a gallon of bleach I realized they were plastic not bottle brush! They never bleached!

Here's how: Step 1 - I poured about a 1/4 of a bottle of bleach into a deep container and added some hot water and soaked the trees for just a few minutes (swished them around). I didn't have any trouble bleaching them but if you do try a second soaking. Be sure you wear gloves!!

Step 2. I rinsed the trees and let them dry over night.

You can leave them this color and pretty them up anyway you like. Or...you can dye them!

Here's one in some red Rit dye. I used the liquid dye. I just poured some in the glass bowl and added some hot water. It absorbed the dye really quickly!

How cute are they! Yellow and red bottle brush trees at the fraction of what it would cost to buy them retail! Plus you're free to choose whatever color works for your decor. You could do pink, or baby blue, black, multi colored...whatever!!

Then after you're done dyeing them you can leave them as they are or you can cute them up!

Some I sprayed with spray adhesive and then used some Martha Stewart glitter others I added some "ornaments".

I have a few more to do and Wednesday I'll show you where I put mine! Let me know if you try this. I'd love to see what you do with them!