Bleaching and Dying Miniature Bottle Brush Trees Final Results

I have to say I am really pleased at the how these turned out. I put together this mini Easter Bunny vignette on top of one of my cake stands I made out of vintage glassware. The orange one is perfect! Reminds me of a carrot. The orange trees could be used for Halloween displays too!

The great gals over at a few of the mini forums I belong to made some wonderful suggestions as to how to dye these. Most who had tried this before recommended using the rite dye for permanent color. I didn't have any handy but I did have some cheapy Easter egg dye that we never used and it worked beautifully! I followed the package directions but used hot tap water. The directions didn't say either way on the water temp. I reheated the water in the microwave for a minute or two when it cooled.

First I practiced with the rusted tree just to see how it would turn out. I tried yellow first but it looked a bit too dark for me so I dunked it in the in the blue, that came out a pretty aqua color. Oh note on that, to get very light color trees, like the large light pink one, rinsed in cool tap water right away after dunking in the dye.

Make sure you start with dry trees before dipping into the dye. Just a quick dip into the dye is all it takes You can always dip them again if they are too light.

Ok this could work.

After dunking I dabbed them onto a paper towel, placed them back into their stands and left them to dry on the windowsill.

Yippee! That old vintage look I was going for!