Orange Garland and Ornament How-To

4 Materials
$10
30 Minutes
Easy

What do you think of the rising popularity of the orange garland trend? For me friends, well frankly it’s love! I saw them for the first time last year and marveled at their beauty and simplicity. Apparently I’m beyond late to that train though: They’ve been around since the Middle Ages! I can see why, it’s such a beautiful gift of nature preserved as an elegant garland or ornament.

I’ve seen and read several different ways to dry oranges. I’ve also done it a few different ways. My first attempt I put them in the oven at the lowest temp one evening, and then went on to completely forgot about them! I woke at about 2am remembering what I had done. Oops! They actually turned out alright and I I ended up still using them! The temp was so low that even at 6+ hours they didn’t burn. Thank goodness for that!

ORANGE GARLAND THE RIGHT WAY

Let’s not do what I did though . . . I wouldn’t consider that safe. 😉 

I went on to try a few different ways after that and found what works well for me! Be aware though, all ovens cook hotter or cooler than each other. My oven cooks hot, so I often have to bake things for less time, or reduce the temp. 

Knowing your oven goes a long way when baking and crafting with it! Take what you know about your oven into consideration when doing something like drying oranges. After a batch or two you’ll find the sweet spot and be on a roll!

How to dry oranges: 

  • Cut into thin slices
  • Lay out on a parchment lined cookie sheet (I elevated mine by also using a cooling rack on top of the parchment paper to speed drying time)
  • Pat oranges dry with paper towels on both sides (I had the cutest helper to assist in the patting down) 😉

  • Place in oven at 200 for about two hours. Flip every 30 to 45 minutes. Since I did two sheets at a time I also rotated the sheets every time I flipped the oranges to help with even drying.

  • They will be done when rinds look dry and shiny
  • Allow to cool and then get busy making all the things!

ORANGE GARLAND 

I learned a few things about orange garland I’ll share with you here. If you want your oranges to hang well, and not flip flop around there’s a couple things you need to do. 

DO NOT do like I did in the picture below and punch the two holes in the center. You’ve got to anchor your orange at the top so that it hangs well. Also, if you end up adding greenery or cinnamon sticks to it and the holes are in the middle the weight of it will simply go where gravity sends anything, and be showing the floor all it’s glory.

Instead place the two holes just below the rind in whatever you’d like to be the top portion of the orange so it hangs just like it should.

Again, in the above picture the oranges were threaded wrong. Sadly I didn’t figure out about the hole placement until I had made several garlands. (Insert face palm here) And truthfully, if you are going to drape them over something you can move and adjust them to face out. However, if they are a stand alone garland that will be just draping, then that’s where the real issue of hole placement will come into play.

You didn’t know I could talk so much about where to string an orange did you? Believe me, I didn’t either! 😉 

DIFFERENT ORANGE GARLAND DECOR OPTIONS:

Simply stringing an orange garland up is beautiful and perfect in its simplicity.

However, if you want to jazz it up a bit, there are a few things you can add!

Cinnamon sticks and greenery are great additions and complement the color of the orange well. Feel free to mix and match these items to create any kind of garland you’d like. Above are four examples of ways to add in these additions. Aren’t they swoon worthy? (Again, holes near the top! These ones I did incorrectly too.) 

HOW TO ATTACH ITEMS TO THE GARLAND

I adhered my cinnamon sticks and greenery to the oranges using a hot glue gun.

MAKING ORNAMENTS

Orange ornaments can be just jaw dropping! And they’re honestly put together a lot like the full garlands.

And friends, I did the ornaments correctly! Holes in the right places! Isn’t it sad how long it took me to figure that out? Anyhow, moving on. 

Orange Ornaments are such a simple, beautiful, budget friendly way to elevate your Christmas decor! I went ahead and glued on some greenery and cinnamon sticks to some of them, and left others as is. For the backs I added two dots of glue to the tops of the rind and secured the string to it so I was sure they’d hang as straight as possible.

OTHER USES FOR DRIED ORANGES:

You don’t have to string the dried oranges together to use as decor. For the garland shown below I simply set oranges onto the garland every few inches and it added just the wow factor I was looking for.

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Eryn | Eryn Whalen Online
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  1 question
  • Susannah Susannah on Dec 30, 2019

    How long do they last? More than one season?

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