What Is It About Vintage-Style Bottle Brush Trees?

What is it that's so appealing about bottle brush trees? 

Maybe it's that they take many of us back to our childhood when our mothers decorated with small bottle brush trees, often handed down from their mothers.

Maybe it's that they're easy to work with. Because the more contemporary versions come in so many colors and sizes (from large to teeny tiny), they can make a nice addition to almost any holiday vignette.

Maybe it's that they're simplistic. Nothing fancy, even when embellished with fake snow, glitter or a few vintage glass balls.

Whatever the reason, I've grown to love this versatile addition to my holiday decor and thought I'd share some of my bottle brush trees with you.

On the buffet, accompanied by vintage glass ornaments and tree toppers . . .

A nice grouping of three creates a simple, peaceful scene sprouting from among vintage silver ornaments in a large blue Mason jar . . .

This one was among a shoebox full of trees I picked up at an estate sale. It started out a hideous blue-green color. I doused it in Clorox before giving it and some of its cohorts a home on the family room mantel alongside my eclectic group of snowmen . . .

Some of my trees are tucked inside drawers around the house  . . .

Some are planted in vintage aluminum molds on the basement hearth and in a vintage wooden cheese box on the Hoosier cabinet  . . .

And some are nestled in glassware . . . 

If you're looking for something simple to tie things together in your holiday decor, try using a few vintage-style bottle brush trees. You can find them at any craft store. And, if you prefer to decorate in shades of white, go ahead and buy the green craft store trees. Drop them in a bucket of bleach until the color is gone, rinse, let them dry and you're set to go.

Make it a great day!

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Knick of Time Tuesday

Still Star Struck--A Quick Homespun Garland

Twinkle, twinkle little star . . .

Stars have fascinated me since childhood. Both the celestial kind and star-shaped anythings.

A look around our home and, year-round, you'll catch a glimpse of my Abingdon Pottery and other star vases, some rustic metals and primitives and milk glass filled with shiny baubles.

My dad was an amateur sky watcher and built his own telescopes. We spent many a summer evening with our eyes trained on the sky, examining the sparkle of the stars and imagining if there were others like us out there in the vast darkness.

The past few months, I've seen so many cool crochet items on Pinterest and Etsy that I got the itch to get out my crochet hooks. It's been a few years since I've done any crocheting.

Source: Pinterest

Source: Pinterest

Source: Pinterest

Since the week of Thanksgiving, we've made two trips to Illinois. Nine hours round trip each. Great time for a couple of crochet projects.

I made a garland of cream-colored stars on the first trip and, on the second trip, nearly finished a longer garland with smaller stars in green that I plan to use in my spring decor.

I added the garland to the family room mantel above which we recently hung a special family painting my husband's parents gave him. 

These little gems are a joy to make and very easy. I found the instructions on the internet here. I strung them all together with a simple chain stitch string. Twinkle, twinkle . . . 

Make it a great day!

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Primp Your Stuff

Faux la, la, la, la

Oscar Wilde said, "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

One thing I can't be accused of is decorating for Christmas the same way year after year. I don't always throw the baby out with the bath water, but I do change things up and add some unexpected delights to the vignettes I carry over from a previous year.

This year, I wanted a different centerpiece for the dining room table. I had picked up a clear glass globe at a thrift store for 99 cents last summer. Unfortunately, I didn't remember to photograph it before I started its transformation to a faux mercury glass tree.

The weather was so incredible this weekend that I set up shop outdoors and worked on my tree creation and a few other projects I'd had sitting around. 62 degrees in Nebraska in December isn't unheard of, but it's a bit uncommon.

In contrast to the high gloss of the mercury glass, I wanted the base of the tree to be rougher. I poked around the potting shed and found a terra cotta pot that was the perfect size. Cleaned it off with a wire brush and transformed it with a mixture of gesso and a paint sample with the name of  "Marble Glass."

I wanted the pot to look rustic and distressed, as a contrast to the sparkle of the globe, so I dry brushed the creamy paint mixture.  The pot also has a couple of chips and a crack in the rim. I think they call that character.

A flameless votive inside the pot adds a soft glow to the globe.

One of my milk glass cake stands on top of a vintage oval mirror, several small mercury glass ornaments, a few glitter stars and some acrylic ice crystals round out the centerpiece.

The sparkle and shine in the center of the dining room table is a nice complement to the arrangement on top of the buffet--one of those vignettes for which I retained a few elements from the previous year. I'll share that with you later.

Have you tried making your own mercury glass? Isn't it fun?

Make it a great day!

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Froggy Went a Carolin'

Thanksgiving involved a whirlwind trip to Illinois and special, quality time with family. Today, back home, the Christmas decorations are tugging at my sleeve.

I'm struggling a bit to find my decorating mojo this year. Can't really explain it, other than that I seem to have lost several months between last Christmas and this holiday season and it's thrown me off my game. My, how time flies when you get older!

Sitting in the family room last week, I looked across at the stack of flower frogs that showed off some of my pressed leaves. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before. The stack looked a bit like a tree.

So, even before I pulled out the boxes of Christmas decorations, I created a row of frog Christmas trees to display on a small, rustic shelf.

Two of the trees stand atop bases of overturned antique sconce pieces.

If you have a few flower frogs laying around the house, you'd be surprised at how versatile they can be. I use them year-round for decorating. They are handy for displaying photos and postcards and holding pens, pencils and paintbrushes. And, yes, they're great for the purpose they were intended to fill.

A beautiful black glass frog, hidden inside a jack o' lantern, created the base for my annual fall collection of dried garden goodies. I call him Wilson.

Use a collection of frogs as a focal point in your decorating year round.

The small glass frogs look a little like snowflakes and make a nice, sparkly addition to holiday decor..

If you're one who thinks frogs are fair-weather friends, dust off your pieces for endless year round decorating fun. If you don't have any flower frogs, consider picking up a few at an estate sale, thrift store or on Etsy or eBay. They're reasonably priced and a joy to work with.

Make it a great day!

Linking to:

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Finally Found Her

I can't even remember how long I've been looking for an affordable vintage dress form. She didn't have to be perfect. She didn't have to be beautiful. She just had to be.

Now, after all this time, meet Marvey (short for Marvelous).  I met her at a local estate sale and took  her home with me. She isn't perfect. Her body is unevenly faded and more than a little dusty (she fits right in around here), her innards are rusty, but all the parts work (more than I can say about myself!) and she has a number of small blemishes on her skin. But, she stands tall, proud and stately.

Take a look inside her and you get a glimpse of a bygone era and a forgotten project.

Recently, when I was cleaning out my work room, I pulled out a few items I had stored away in one of my old steamer trunks. Here's Marvey modeling some of my personal '70s fashions.

My mother was an accomplished seamstress. When my sister and I were growing up, Mom made most of our clothes (something that, unfortunately, we didn't fully appreciate at the time). She taught herself to knit and also knew how to crochet. In 1970, I headed off to college in style in this wonderful poncho she knitted for me.

While I was still in college, she crocheted this striped beauty. Are you getting the sense yet that I loved ponchos?

It didn't stop there. In what could have been dubbed The Year of the Poncho, Mom also made me a gorgeous brown plaid wool poncho with a hood. It was fully lined and finished with a gorgeous brown trim and big wooden buttons. Imagine the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I discovered that poncho wasn't in the steamer, where I thought I had stored it along with the other two. Oh, I do hope I find it somewhere. When I reflect on my college years, I most often visualize myself in one or another of those lovingly made, wonderfully special ponchos.

To close out today's 1970s style show is this fabulous crochet and suede vest. Far out, as we used to say! My mom didn't make this one. I found it at a thrift store back in the 1980s and have held on to it over the years. It's in like new condition.

Thank you, Marvey, for making this fashion retrospective possible.

Make it a great day!

Linking to:

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Melancholy November

How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.

-   Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny autumn day. The temperature here was 75 degrees--unusual for this time of year. By evening, it was raining and a cold front moved in. Today's high is predicted in the upper 30s.

So, here it is. Another November.  Melancholy November.

November makes me feel unsettled, caught between the teardown of Halloween and the anticipation of decorating for Christmas in the manner to which my family has become accustomed.

Do you feel it yet? That itch? That urge to pull out the Christmas boxes and get right to it?

No, no. Patience. Still nearly two weeks until Thanksgiving. Oh, if I can only hold on for another week! Yes. That would be better . . . 

Make it a great day!

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Outdoor Wednesday

Pearls and Scraps

Halloween's over. No point in lingering. I'm ready to move on to Christmas.

What happened to Thanksgiving, you ask? For the past 26 years, we've traveled to Illinois to spend Thanksgiving with my husband's family. Over the years, weather has prevented us from going only a couple of times. Because we don't spend the holiday in our home, I automatically move directly from Halloween mode to Christmas mode in my decorating. And, now that our children are grown and gone, that's even easier.

Even though the Fall decorations are still up throughout the house, this weekend I was itching to make something Christmas-y.

After the holidays last year, my local grocery store, which has a fantastic floral shop, had what seemed like a mountain of Christmas items left for clearance. I bought out every one of these little feather trees, among other holiday items. The trees are small and sweet and whimsical.

Being vintage myself, I have a distinctly vintage decorating style. So, I didn't care for the bright white of these pretty little trees and planned from the outset to "age" them and give them some simple embellishments. I also planned to plant them in these small, vintage metal molds.

After giving the trees a tea bath,  I prettied them up with little scraps of a net crinoline and satin from a beautiful, but tattered 1940s wedding dress that I am using on a custom project for a friend. Then I added faux pearls from my collection of broken-down and cast-off vintage jewelry.

As I was preparing the vintage mold bases, I remembered I had three small vintage milk glass jars and decided to see how they looked. Can you believe it? The base of the trees fit perfectly in the jars. They seemed to be made for each other. I'll likely make more of these and put some in the metal molds.

I'm toying with the idea of a light dusting of glitter. What would you do? To glitter or not to glitter--that is the question.

Make it a great day!

Nifty Thrifty Sunday
Sunday's Best
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Better Late than Never Christmas Inspirations