Diamond Dust & Golden Memories

The CarbFest is behind us and it's onward to Christmas. I've been wanting to make these trees ever since I saw Mrs. Bingles' beautiful creations. She takes vintage Christmas baubles & whatnots and breathes new bling into them. My daughter-in-law calls them "vintagements." I love it!I've saved 3 boxes of the first ornaments we ever bought - our first Christmas, 1974. I think that qualifys them as "vintage." I've always wanted to display them somehow and Mrs. B. gave me the inspiration! I didn't think there would be enough for what I had in mind so I put the word out that I was looking for old ornaments. A friend gave me some from her family's treasure. Her father recently passed away & they were needing to find new homes for various things. The ivory/white ones on the tree above are from her. The blue ones are ours. I think she'll be happy to know some of her family's ornaments still sparkle at Christmas-time, right alongside ours.I saw this tree-topper at an antique shop in Branson last month. It was another one of those "gasp" moments (see previous post). We had one just like it when I was a little girl. I always thought it was the most beautiful thing in the entire world. Mom told me she kept it til it just fell apart. I was absolutely thrilled to find one like it, in great shape and only $6!Mrs. Bingle actually uses bottle brush trees for her creations. The biggest I could find was 12". I wanted a bigger one, so I bought a bottle brush tree & a regular artificial tree to experiment on. That's how I ended up making two of these. You can bleach the color out of bb trees, then dye them another color. But I found out you can't do that with the other kind. After bleaching the bb tree, I drenched them both in "Diamond Dust" then glued the ornaments on. Diamond Dust is fabulous! All shiny & sparkly. I got a big jar at "M's" with a 1/2 price coupon and used half of it on these two trees. Take a sponge brush & with white glue, cover a few branches at a time, then spoon on the spangles.On the bb tree, I used the smaller ornaments my friend gave me and filled in with old bits of jewelry and pearly strands I've had since the early 90s (nearly 20 years ago - almost vintage, right?). The star on top was in the stash of old jewlery I had collected when we were making praise & worship banners back then. So glad it finally found the perfect home!Finally, notice the tree stand. It's the top of a cut glass butter dish. Thanksgiving Day, I was taking it off the top shelf & dropped the bottom part. It's only cut glass but my grandmother gave it to me sometime in the 70s. I was so sad and kinda stood there looking at the broken glass, thinking I would have to throw the top away too, because what in the world could I do with it?My daughter-in-law piped up & said, "don't throw it away - you'll think of something to use it for!" I'm so glad she did!! It completes my Vintagement Tree, with stories and memories of loved ones and happy times.