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Found a package of dried Spanish Moss at the dollar store, so I bought first and asked questions later. Thanks to my friends at the Yahoo groups for advice on dyeing it.

When I went to the store and found the dry dye (Rit brand) I bought dark green and golden yellow. Just happened to have an empty plastic ice cream tub waiting for a project, so mixed up some dark green with water and added a few drops of glycerin. (not sure why, but that's what I was told)

Then I closed the lid of the tub and shook it up. When I checked inside, there were still un-dyed spots, so I tried using a craft stick to dunk the moss down into the dye. Still had un-dyed spots, so had to use my fingers.

When it looked like the moss was good and green, I squeezed out the excess and put it on a paper towel to dry.

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I kept adding water, glycerin and yellow dye to each batch. The last batch had more yellow than green. It all dried overnight. It took very little of the dark green dye, so I have most of that left and about 1/4 of the yellow left.

This morning I used a paint brush to apply some glue to a piece of papier mache and let rest for about 6 hours. ALL of it stuck. Ran some water over it and the dye didn't run, so I'm assuming it's set.

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It was taking so long to add the layers of pulp to get the height I wanted that I taped up some bunched newspaper to the top of the large mound.

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Rocks and Trees

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