VIDEO: Drying orange slices and using them for handicrafts

How to dry orange slices

We do not only associate the Christmas season with Christmas Eve and many gifts but also decorations made from apples, nuts, cinnamon sticks and dried orange slices. The latter can easily be made yourself:

1. In the winter months the supermarkets are full of oranges and clementines - the typical Christmas fruit. If you buy a net full of oranges anyway, you won't even notice if you use some fruits to dry them.
2. To do this, you need to cut the oranges into 1 - 1.5 cm thick slices with a sharp knife. Note that the slices will thin and shrink as they dry. Since you mainly use whole orange slices for the decorations, you do not need to consider the beginning and end of the oranges.
3. A cost-effective variant is drying on the heater: To do this, you have to put the panes next to each other on a piece of kitchen paper on the warm heater. You can turn the orange slices over once a day. After a maximum of one week, the slices are dry and can be used for Handcraft be used.

A nice side effect of drying is that the apartment smells wonderfully of orange!

Decoration from dried oranges

When you have dried enough orange slices you can use them for Christmas decorations.

1. Populate the Advent wreath or a flower arrangement with the following attachment: Take two cinnamon sticks (for handicrafts) and a dried orange slice to hand, just like a hot glue gun.
2. Put a glue dot about in the middle of a cinnamon stick and press the other cinnamon stick into it so that they cross each other. The cinnamon sticks should not be perpendicular to each other, but should just run past each other.
3. Put a glue point about 1.5 cm from the outer edge of the orange slice and press the cinnamon sticks that have already been prepared into it. After a short drying period, you can also place the decorative element on a piece of fir with hot glue.

Christmas decorated vase

Large, tall vases in particular can be nicely decorated at Christmas time:

1. Fill the bottom of a large glass vase 1/4 high with moss.
2. Arrange a mixture of cones, small balls, dried orange slices and nuts in the vase so that all parts are clearly visible from the outside.
3. Glue a nice ribbon together at its ends around the vase opening. However, the color should not be so obtrusive that it distracts from the vase contents.

Place the vase on the table or a window sill as an eye-catcher.