pink | Peppermints & Honey Bees

Hola peeps! I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging, not really on purpose but more because I was too busy to start/work on new projects and before I knew it January was half over! I am totally scared by the way time works and wish things would slow down just a bit. Now its that time of year that I just want to bypass to warmer days but I’m trying to enjoy the here and now and find the good, even in this frozen wasteland, because one day I’ll look back and miss these times!

I’ve never really decorated too much for Valentines day but since I have a craft blog now I figured I’d see what I could come up with, and love the results. I’m really starting to get in that heart everything spirit now and even though I don’t do frilly decorations (unless they’re vintage of course!) I made some simple nature inspired pieces. The arrows are inspired by similar ones I found on Pinterest. I used sticks for mine though and used paint and marker for the feathers. the heart tips are cardstock. I also made some of the feathers into earrings for my Etsy shop Peppermint Emporium. The garland is straight from my noggin and is just sticks, coffee filters dyed with watered down craft paint and twine. grab your glue gun and there ya go! Ben buys the unbleached coffee filters so I was a little disappointed that they weren’t white, but afterward I decided I liked the brown color better, it lends itself to the natural rustic vibe I was going for.

I’ve been seeing lots of bottle brush trees all over Pinterest this Christmas season and love all of the different colors. I love the vintage-looking scenes that can be set up with bottle brush trees and I’ve always preferred to decorate with pastels and bright colors instead of the usual red and green themes. I had some bottle brush trees left over from the snow globes I made last year and also bough a bag of small bleached trees from Michaels.

I bleached the trees I had that were green with the intention of dyeing them after I was done but was pleasantly surprised when the trees I had from last year turned light pink before bleaching completely and the one green tree I had bought this year turned a light mint bluish-green. Since this was the colors I wanted to dye them I left them this color and then fully bleached a few.

I used my hurricane glass vase to bleach because I wanted something that was tall and narrow to stick the trees is, normally I wouldn’t use my good glass but ya know, use what you have! I used 1/3 bleach to 2/3 water in the glass and used tongs to dip them in. It really didn’t take long for them to start bleaching and I swished them around in the bleach water to help with the tongs, just wear rubber gloves and be careful. After I bleached the trees I soaked them in soapy water to get the bleach off.

Most of the tutorials I read said to use Rit dye to dye, or food coloring or cool-aid would also probably work, but I used this spray on dye by SEI Tumble Dye that I already had. I love this because it is already made and you can just spray it on, it’s perfect for small dye jobs and comes it tons of colors. You can find it at craft stores or online at www.shopsei.com.

I also touched up the happy accident trees a bit with the spray dye and mixed a bit with water in a spray bottle to get different shades. On the biggest tree I sprayed a couple different colors for an airbrushed ombre effect. That was another reason I used the spray, for the ombre effect, but if you’re going for one solid color, I’d recommend the dip dye method.

I love how they turned out, and I also sprayed a bottle brush wreath I found at Joanne Fabric! Show me yours on Instagram with the hashtag #peppermintsandhoneybees.