DIY: How to Make Bottle Brush Christmas Trees

I've been wanting to make bottle brush Christmas trees for years- so when a few of my girlfriends put together a craft night to make them I was in! I decided to put together a little tutorial for any of you out there who would like to make your own. It's really easy- but beware- it is a bit time consuming. If you can get together with some friends it helps with costs & makes the night so much more fun! 

1) start by buying some village accessory trees- we found Home depot had the best deals but your local fabric or craft store will have them as well

2) grab a pot- fill it with water & bleach {follow direction on the bleach bottle for the water to bleach ratio then add a bit more} I left mine in over night

3) let them dry standing up- otherwise the brush will smoosh

4) buy some dye- we used fushia- kelly green & blue rit dye

make sure you use gloves! I actually used gloves but then put my hand in just a little to far... they were short gloves!

5) set them out to dry again- this time have a fan blowing on them so you can get started with decorating ASAP. they'll turn out darker the longer you leave them in- lighter if you put them in for just a few seconds

6) decorate the trees with glitter or fake snow-we used Martha Stewarts glittering glue to glue the bling on. spread it onto the trees & then roll your trees in the glitter or snow.  

you can see the pretty-ness happening already!

7) cut up your beads & hot glue them onto your trees {we used colorful mardi gras beads from the party store zurchers - martha stewart pearl colored beads & holiday gold & silver colored garland beads from joann's}

     

8) make sure you have your big gulp of diet coke/diet dr. pepper even if it's 10 pm...

9) add some deer or whatever & Ta-Da! {these trees have gold glitter on them- it's hard to see in this picture but they're really pretty}

I used wax paper snow on the trees below- just an FYI the glue didn't really keep the snow on very well so I ended up spreading the hot glue on the trees a little bit at a time- then rolled the tree in the snow