Dried Orange Garland
Do you secretly admire the cozy look of a Little Women Christmas? With the handmade ornaments, simmering dishes, and sparkling dried orange garland festooning the windows and doorways?
I am very drawn to those cozy feelings, and I don’t want to leave those feelings all for the Christmas season. I believe that we can take some of the cozy elements to incorporate into every season.
During the Wintertime, we all tend to consume generous amounts of oranges and other citrus fruits. It’s easy to save the peelings to dry, and to make beautiful slices of citrus rounds to string up later for garlands.
I got the idea of pairing the sliced citrus rounds with other fruits and objects from nature to bring in the outdoors and decorate our home.
One day while I was out walking down our road, I noticed a lot of the gumballs from the Sweet Gum tree scattered in the snow. I collected some of those, to use on my dried orange garland project.
AdSince I already had some sugared cranberries (here’s how to make them), I decided they would look pretty too.
I made some hearts out of my orange peels before drying them, using various sizes of metal heart shaped cookie cutters. Then, I dried the orange peels in my oven with just the pilot on. For other seasons, for year-round decor, you can make daisies or other flower shapes, traditional shapes like circles, triangles, squares or diamonds, or other seasonal shapes. I think that shamrocks would look cute out of lime peels for St. Patty’s Day.
Fresh or dried cranberries pair really well with orange peels for the dried orange garland. Sliced citrus rounds, like lemons or grapefruit, limes or mandarins, look beautiful at any time of the year. We tend to think of them around Christmas and Thanksgiving, but they don’t have to be.
Dried Orange Garland: You Will Need
- I used gold metallic thread to string my garland, but would have used twine if I’d had some.
- A hot glue gun made the job fun and easy
- Orange slices, lemon slices, lime, or any other dried citrus slices
- Small nature items like pinecones, gumballs, seed pods, dried flowers, or whatever suits your fancy
- Dried or fresh cranberries
- Cookie cutter in small heart or other shapes (cut before drying citrus peelings)
- Needle that fits your string size
- Your imagination
How to Make the Dried Orange Garland with Nature Items:
- Cut your string to preferred length.
- Knot the end with a large knot
- Thread your needle.
- Thread nature and orange peel items onto the string.
- Glue items that do not thread easily.
- Maintain a certain pattern of nature items, or place them free-style on the string. I made mine in a repeating pattern.
- Hang in a sunny location for a sun-catcher effect, or as a garland anywhere!
- Hang vertically, or horizontally, as you prefer.
To make your dried orange garlands more versatile for other seasons, change up the shapes and colors. A fresh summer look would be to use just colorful citrus rounds, like limes, lemons, oranges, and grapefruits. This would be cute for a summer party. Add twinkle lights for a touch of sparkle.
Enjoy!
