Wednesday, November 25, 2009

o christmas tree...

Nothing says kitchy-vintage Christmas like a pink bottle brush tree! I recently decided to deck out the house using bunches of these little trees. A couple of thrift stores and an antique mall later, I realized that my dream of finding vintage trees was not going to come true. I looked online and favorited a few on etsy, bid on one on ebay... my thirst for little trees was not satisfied. Then it happened, I found a tutorial for dying your own trees! A quick trip to Pat Catans and I was home with nearly 75 trees of all sizes (up to 5" of course).

It is really a pretty easy process: remove the wooden bases from the trees, let sit in a bleach & water bath. RINSE WELL. Dip in dye (I just used Rit powder dyes - you only need a little dye and a very short dip to get LOTS of color!)

These trees are made by limiting the amount of time you leave your little green trees in the bleach bath. I think it really gives them a vintage flavor, it's as if they have been around so long they faded. It might be neat to try a bleach bath after dying.

These trees are just bleached - no dye needed for some frosty white trees!

We thought that the pink ones almost looked like candy!

I may have some of these up on my etsy soon... check back :)
ALSO: I will be participating in Sew, Mama, Sew's Giveaway Day - so stay tuned!

4 comments:

  1. Oh, I love the blue ones! (Well all of them, but the blue are my favorite.) You always inspire great ideas, I just wish I took the intiative and turned the ideas into actual projects. :)

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  2. Wow great ! I'm in love

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  3. Tried this and it didn't even come close to working... I even went to the original site, too! :(

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  4. Hi, I tried bleaching some trees, the little trees and medium trees bleached well, but the large trees didn't bleach at all. Any suggestions?
    Thanks, Kathy

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