Directions for an Orange Pomander

An orange pomander is also an important item during the holiday season, which is similar to having eggnog or wrapped presents. These spice-studded balls can be made earlier rather than making it at the last minute when the occasions are just around the corner. Some of us make the spice-studded balls several days or even weeks before the holidays started. Although the orange will dry, it will not rot but the orange pomander ball will become very aromatic and smell like cloves and oranges. Once you have gathered the orange pomanders, you can arrange them inside a bowl and make it as your decorative centerpiece or even wrap the orange pomander using colorful ribbons so that you can hang them around your house allowing its nice odor to float throughout your house or in a particular room.

What you need to do:

  1. Thumbtack
  2. Whole cloves
  3. 1 tea spoon of cinnamon
  4. 1 tea spoon of nutmeg
  5. 1 tea spoon of ground cloves
  6. 1 tea spoon of ground ginger
  7. 1 tea spoon of orris root powder
  8. Ribbon

Orange Pomander

Method:

  1. Firstly, you need to examine your orange and decide which area of the orange that you want to insert the cloves. You can even create patterns or lines on your oranges or you can also cover most of the oranges surface.
  2. Take a thumbtack and try to poke a small hole through the orange’s peel before you start to push a small, thin part of a clove through this hole until you notice that the thicker, round part of the clove rests on the orange’s peel.
  3. Once you have finished doing the above step, you need to poke another hole in the orange with its location ideally near enough to your first hole for placing the heads of the cloves making it to almost touching the first right after you insert the second one. For the second hole, you can insert a clove into it the same way that you inserted the first clove earlier mentioned in step two.
  4. Next step to do is to poke more holes and also insert more cloves into the holes until you are satisfied with the number of cloves placed on your oranges. Though you need not to completely cover the orange with cloves, but it should be fairly and heavily studded with cloves because using only a few cloves may result in the orange getting rot.
  5. After that, you need to mix one teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, ground ginger and orris root powder in a large bowl that can hold the oranges. Then you can roll the studded orange in the combination of spice mixture that you have made.
  6. Once you have finished rolling the oranges in the spice mixture, you are ready to wrap the orange using ribbon and start to decorate them by hanging it in a suitable area or simply leave it to dry.
  7. Apart from using orange to create Pomanders, you can also use other citrus fruits like mandarins or lemons

Image Credit:

Flickr CC

Additional Reading:

Crafting Fun

The Scented Room