How To Dye Bottle Brush Christmas Trees

How To Bleach And Paint Bottle Brush Trees

We will show you how to easily bleach and dye your bottle brush Christmas trees for a whole new look. After failing to find the correct shade of pink on Amazon, I decided that I’d try to repurpose some of my trees that I wasn’t wild about.  It turns out that you can bleach the trees and paint them with acrylic paint to whatever color or colors your little heart desires.  So grab some of your bottle brush trees and let’s get crackin’.

Supplies

• Bottle brush trees
• Bleach
• Disposable gloves (not necessary, but you might want them to minimize the bleach and paint on your fingers)
• Two bins or bowls (I picked up a couple from the Dollar Tree that I’ve used for all sorts of craft projects like tie dying, pinecone bleaching, etc.)
• Acrylic Paint – I would suggest picking out a few colors in addition to white so you can lighten the colors if you’d like
• Small foam brush or paint brush
• Cup of water to water down the acrylic paint
• Paper plates or something to put your paint down on to add water or mix colors etc.
• An old towel or drop cloth, something to cover and protect your workspace
• Apron or old shirt to wear while painting.  The paint tends to splatter a little when you’re applying it to the bristles on the tree. It’s much more fun when you don’t have to worry 🙂

Bleaching The Bottle Brush Trees

Not all of the trees will bleach.  I bought a bunch from the Dollar Tree a couple years ago and their texture was more plasticky.  Those suckers did not bleach one bitt. The true bottle brush trees will bleach tho.

Start by filling your bucket or container with water and bleach.  We used a combination of about 1 part water 2 parts bleach.

Place all of your trees in the bleach/water solution and let them soak until color is gone.  Gently rub off any glitter that is attached.  Some of our trees appeared to still have color on them, but it was actually the colored glitter that was still attached.

We were able to get most of the glitter off by rubbing the bristle back and forth while the tree was soaking in the bleach solution.

Take the trees out of the bleach solution and rinse them off in your second bucket or bowl full of just water.

Lay out your trees to drip dry while you get your paint ready.  They don’t need to dry before painting them.

Painting Your Bottle Brush Trees

Put a little dollop of paint on your paper plate and add some water to thin it out a bit.

Start painting the bristles of the tree making sure to coat all the way to the center of the tree.

We added some white paint to the pink to get a softer shade of pink.  You can experiment with different ombre effects by adding a darker color to the bottom and lighter shades at the top of the tree.

Set your finished trees out on your drop cloth or old towel to dry.

Once the trees are all dry you can add them to your decor.  Check out some of our other Christmas DIY’s.