Dying Bottle Brush Trees

This past weekend I found a tutorial on how to bleach and dye bottle brush trees.  It was really easy and really fun.  I started with a bag of Lemax trees from Michaels that ended up being on sale.  It was a 21 tree pack in 4 different sizes.  I threw them all in a bucket of 50/50 bleach & water solution andthey bleached out in the time it took me to fold a load of laundry.

I then proceeded to dye them using food coloring, easter egg tablets, Glimmermist, etc.  The only problem I encountered were those darn blue trees.  When the trees bleach out they are a bit on the yellow side and when I used blue dye they turned more of a greenish color.  After trying everything I could think of I spray painted those babies {hence the blue base}.  Now that they're dry I'm going to paint the bases silver.  The only thing left to decide now is whether or not I want to spray a bit of flocking back on the trees as it tends to come off in the bleaching process.  Flocking or glitter?  I don't know...

My husband has been asking his dad for his Christmas ornaments for ages now that they don't decorate anymore.  My father in law finally relented and we are the new owners of some of the most gorgeous vintage bulbs.  Look at these...

And the old original boxes were amazing.  It's nice to have some family ornaments that have been passed on.  About 10 years ago my dad got a tad bit overzealous when cleaning out his shed and garage and he accidentally threw out all of our families ornaments.  When he realized it he felt so bad.  Needless to say, we don't say "ornament" around my mom these days.