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Do you play a brass instrument? Or know a brass player? Keep reading after the break to find out how to make mouthpiece brushes & cleaning snakes into little Christmas trees!
Bottle brush trees are so cute & trendy right now! Pair that with the joy I get from music store trash finds, & you get this tutorial. I’m thinking the cleaning snake (I dyed the bristles green) & mouthpiece brush (which has white bristles in the picture) originally came from a care kit kind of like this…or maybe they were purchased separately. I don’t know. And I’m not sure which instrument they’re from. At any rate, they were rescued from the trash (probably came back with a rental instrument).
Enough of all the intro. Let’s get to the project! We’ll start with the cleaning snake trees.
SUPPLIES:
cork (I used corks they put in flutes in shipping…also from the trash!)
wire cutters
cleaning snake
optional: green fabric spray paint (I used some from Tulip, but the way I tried didn’t work as well as I’d like…maybe I can experiment some more)
This project is super easy, especially if you don’t bother with dying the bristles.
- Cut the brushes off, leaving a little of the snake to operate as the “tree trunk”
- (optional) dye the bristles…if you want to know the way I tried, just let me know in the comments.
- Poke the trunk into the hole in the cork. If the cork doesn’t have a hole or you don’t have a cork from a shipped flute, you can use a wine cork with a hole drilled in the top.
Pretty easy, right? Now onto the second version…
SUPPLIES:
mouthpiece cleaning brush
wine cork, cut part way through
- I used this tutorial as a guide for cutting my cork. I just cut it vertically(ish) about halfway down.
- Then, stick the brush in it to resemble a potted Christmas tree!
- If you want, you could also try wrapping washi tape or ribbon around the cork once the tree is in.
And there you have it! Two pretty easy ways to make cute little bottle brush-esque Christmas trees from discarded music paraphernalia!
Oh & please show me your project pictures & use #Fischaper on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter!
Merry Christmas!
-Barbara
Barbara Fischer runs Fischarper, LLC and loves her job as a harpist and private music educator. She enjoys blogging about various aspects of the music field on fischarper.com/blog. For more music resources, check out the Fischarper store. Find out where you can find Barbara on the interwebs here. And you can sign up to receive Fischarper updates by joining the email list.