A quickie post today before i set off on my Christmas York trip (yay!) Thought i’d share the results of my Orangey experiment after seeing Jane’s lovely tree decorations from Tea With Ruby.

As you may have seen in my previous post my Christmas Trees are pretty full so i decided to make some pretty fruity wreathes which cost me under £5 and look lovely on our kitchen door.

I’m not the best teacher but if you wanted to make your own here’s my step by step guide…

- After slicing 5 oranges into about 5mm thick slices, i cooked them in the oven for 1hr 30 mins at 120 degrees. I turned them over for the last half hour and probably could have left them longer but was afraid i’d burn them!

- Once cooked i laid them on a wire wrack tray and left them for a day and a half to dry out. They were still a little soft in the middle but Jane assures me they’ll dry out by the end of Christmas.

- I found some old carboard (thickish stuff from a packaging box) then cut a circle with a diameter of 9 inches, with a smaller circle an inch and a half in from the edge.

- I then roughly taped some wadding around the wreath base only on one side. Wool will work just as well if you have some lying around.

- Then I cut strips of hessian fabric 2 inches wide – approx 3meters long but it wasn’t continuous. I then wrapped this around the base adding a dab of glue where the strips started and finished. (You could use another fabric – you can’t really see the hessian if you look at the pictures).

- After this i played about with placements of the orange slices for a bit and decided to add some holly leaves (picked on a walk like a vandal) and some faux berries i found at a local haberdashery. Boyes will probably have something like it or you could just use red beads?

- Once happy with my design i glue gunned like crazy and stuck everything down securely. I did have a spare bit of thick card to press the holly leaves down, they were very very sharp!

- I picked a shimmery gold ribbon to tie my wreathe up and wired the two leaves and three berries together leaving a little extra wire to wrap and knot around the ribbon where it tied, which finished it off nicely.

What do you think? I’m no Martha Stewart but hopefully i made the instructions easy to follow and i think it’s rather pretty Plus everytime i open the kitchen door i get a whiff of oranges – lovely!