DIY Bottle Brush Trees - The Morris Mansion

As we are coming up on the Christmas season for 2022, I’m so excited to decorate! One decoration that’s really popular and that I LOVE is Bottle Brush Trees, especially a bunch styled together. Let’s make some DIY Bottle Brush Trees of our own!

And in case you were wondering, YES. I am one of THOSE PEOPLE who decorate right after Halloween.

cover photo for this article about how to make bottle brushed trees from toilet brush and baby bottle brushes

Here’s the funniest part of this project: the bottle brush trees can be made from baby bottle brushes, from Dollar Tree! WHAT?? I was going to try to make the diy bottle brush trees out of the toilet brushes, but they only had one, so I improvised. Now they will actually be bottle brush trees made from a bottle brush….he he he.

showing the toilet brush and bottle brush that I used to make the diy bottle brush trees from dollar tree

Table of Contents

Gather Supplies for DIY Bottle Brush Trees

toilet wand or baby bottle brush from dollar tree
spray paint of choice ( I used this one)
spray paint button pusher thing (haha)
wooden base
wire cutters
sander
drill
hot glue gun
scissors

Cut the Bottle Brush and Toilet Brush

using wire cutters to cut the toilet brush in half to make the bottle brush tree diy

For the toilet brush, take your wire cutters and cut the wire just above the plastic handle in both attachment points. You can discard the handle or keep for another project. This gives you about 10 inches to work with. Cut in the middle for two different height “trees” for desired heights.

cutting the bottle brush to make bottle brush trees on my own

For the baby bottle brush, cut the top part off above the plastic handle and snip the smaller part off the bottom as well. This will give you one large tree and a smaller one.

I purchased 8 bottle brushes and 1 toilet wand, and the cashier looked at me like I was crazy. This should give me about 20 bottle brush Christmas trees to make a mini forest.

Make the Base

the different sides of the wooden blocks I used for bottle brush tree bases

Check out these wooden blocks I found on amazon. Aren’t they darling! I’m cheating and buying a base, but you can totally make your own. I got these 1/2 in wooden blocks for the smaller trees.

If I were making my own bases, I have a ton scrap wood in my garage to use. A lot of it seems to be 1×3 so that’s what I would use and just cut them down to 2×2 in on my miter saw.

measuring the center of the wooden blocks with a tape measure and pen

Next, locate the center of all the tree bases. You can use measuring tape for this. Find the center of each block and mark it with a pen so you know where to drill.

all of the wooden bases for the diy bottle brush trees are marked and easy guides for where to drill

Then, we need to drill the hole. Making sure to go straight down, drill a hole approximately 1/2 inch deep. Use a drill bit that is close to the same thickness as the wire on the DIY bottle brush trees.

For the smaller trees, I didn’t drill a hole, I just hot glued them right to the wooden block.

using my ryobi hot glue gun to glue the smaller diy bottle brush trees to the smaller wooden blocks

Now it’s time to sand the bases before gluing the trees just to get rid of any sharp pieces or wood splinters.

How to Make a Bottle Brush Tree

how to make the bottle brush trees: shaping the trees with scissors

It’s time to shape our trees! Grab a pair of scissors. I started in the middle, angled them up and started snipping all the way around the brush. At the top, I cut the the bristles the shortest, and cut them gradually longer as I got closer to the bottom.

this was shaping the tree bottle brush made from the toilet brush

Not too shabby looking!!

showing how the bottle brush trees diy look after shaping and before painting them

Hot Glue the Bottle Brush Trees to the Base

This is pretty self explanatory, hot glue the tree at the wire into the previously driven hole in the wooden base. Try to place the wire straight so the tree stands straight. If it doesn’t, that’s also ok. It gives your trees character!

make sure the hole in the tree base is as big or bigger than the stem of the diy bottle brush trees

Pro Tip: if you are a serious crafter like me, treat yourself to a battery operated hot glue gun. Toss that old corded hot glue gun that never stays standing up and never look back! I have this one from Ryobi shown below, and I LOVE IT!

attach the bottle brush tree to wooden block base using hot glue

Painting the DIY Bottle Brush Trees

I took inspiration from Pinterest, and wanted to have very natural trees. I chose to go with a deep hunter green, and silver for added sparkle of “snow.”

I used hunter green spray paint to spray the diy bottle brush trees

Heading outside, I used spray paint for the fastest application. My spray paint handle thing is my favorite thing to use, so I don’t get paint all over my hands. Spray paint is the WORST to get off your hands.

Give the trees a couple of light coats of spray paint and let them dry for several hours.

spray in light coats them turn the christmas bottle brush trees over to spray the otherside

Add a Little Sparkle

Once all the trees were dry, I brought them inside. Using a small paint brush and some metallic acrylic silver paint, I dabbed about half of the trees to add the appearance of shimmering snow.

I added sparkly silver metallic paint to the bottle brush trees diy

side by side to show the trees with shimmer and those without

Final Results

how to make diy bottle brush trees result

my christmas diy bottle brush trees all complete

Ok, these came out SO CUTE! I was expecting them to be cute, but look like they had been a DIY project. These look like ones I could have bought at target!

What do you guys think? Would you try this inexpensive project?

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