I got this idea out of a book. Hideous isn’t it? It’s huge for one thing. So I went back and looked and it’s meant to be a tree topper, not an ornament. But that only makes it slightly less hideous. I don’t have a good tree topper but it’s not going to be this one either. I’ll make something some day.

So why did I make this thing if I think it’s hideous? Here’s how it happened. When I got all the books in the post-Christmas sale I flipped through them noting that I didn’t have the supplies to make any given project in the book. I needed cookie cutters or stone molds or gold leafing or . . . . So I went to the post-Christmas sales at various craft stores and as I saw things that had been on the materials lists I picked them up. I guess I saw the bottle brush trees and remembered seeing them in the book.

On Sunday I was working on my latest quilled project but I wanted to take a break so I pulled out the books to see what I could make and determined that I almost had enough supplies to make the bottle brush tree thingy. I went out and bought what else I needed and on Monday I made it. Only then did I really look at the picture and notice that it was hideous – not just my version, the version in the book too.

Then I took the leftover bottle brush tree and glued some glittery pom-poms and gold stars and ribbon to it and made this:



which is much cuter.