bottle brush trees

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I love decorating with those adorable little bottle brush trees, but I don't care for the dark green that they usually come in.  They have now started to sell colored ones, but the prices on those are more than I want to spend.  So we've got a great compromise.  Buy the ugly green sisal trees and color them myself!

What you will need:

bottle brush / sisal trees
bleach
RIT dyes
water
old pails or bowls and an old towel

I got a pack of trees so I had a variety of sizes and colors to try out.    Start by mixing up a bucket of bleach and water and keep a seperate pail of plain water.  I did my bleach mixture 1 part bleach to 2 parts water.  The more bleach the faster your trees will start to lose color, but at my mixture, it only took about 1-2 minutes at the most.  If you use a more diluted mixture you can watch the trees change and maybe stop them at a green/teal color you like.



All you need to do is dip your tree in the bleach mixture until it's where you want it then dip it into the pail of water to stop the bleach.

Here you can see what about 15 - 30 seconds in the bleach alone did to my trees.  I actually like the color that they came out to!  It took the real harshness of the green out and left me with a beautiful teal color.



If you want other colors, then you're going to need to leave your trees in the bleach until most of the color is removed and you are left with a shade of yellow. 

For coloring the trees:

Mix up your dye according to the directions.  I basically used about a Tbsp of color to roughly a cup of boiling water. 





Just dip your tree into your dye and check it every 20 seconds or so to see how it has deposited the color.  Remove it quicker for a lighter color or leave it in longer for a darker color.  I also kept a bucket of water next to the dye to easily remove the color and check on the process.  Once you are happy with the color, run your tree under the faucet until the water runs clear and all the dye is removed.  I left mine to dry on an old towel.

I love how my trees turned out!  They will match perfectly with our holiday decor and they were super easy to make.  Doesn't get any better than that.

do it yourself