How to Make a Dried Orange Garland
As my kids have gotten older, I’ve tried to found easy Christmas crafts for them to do during our long days inside. We have done cinnamon ornaments, essential oil play-doh, and orange garlands.
We have already done our orange garlands for the season, but we will dry some more to use on gifts this year to fancy them up! I love these because they are easy, they give the kids some ownership over our gifting and decor, and they keep little hands busy for a time. I have received oodles of questions about how I go about drying my oranges, so I decided to put it in writing so I could simply share the link with everyone who wants to know how to make these.
Items you will need:
A bag of oranges
kitchen twine
knitting needle (safe for little hands)
Cinnamon Bark oil (optional, but recommended)
How to dry oranges:
- Heat oven to 200-250 degrees
- slice oranges thinly (this is key to getting them to dry well)
- pat the oranges dry
- lay oranges on a cookie sheet without overlapping them (I like to put mine on a wire rack, but this isn’t mandatory)
- place the pan in the preheated oven
- flip oranges every hour
- bake for (around) 7 hours, depending on thickness of oranges and the oven
- leave on pan overnight
How to string oranges:
- determine how long you want your garland and cut the twine
- thread the needle
- pull the needle in one orange section and out another (this keeps the orange slices from sliding down the twine as it is hanging)
- put a drop of Cinnamon Bark EO on your fingers and run it down the twine and on the orange slices (don’t touch your eyes ;))
- knot the ends and hang it up!
And… a video sharing our process…
