The holiday season should not feel like a race to the finish line. Avoid the frenzy of last-minute holiday shopping with homespun gifts. Here’s a fragrant orange and clove pomander you can make with materials you may already have:
Photography by Erin Boyle for Gardenista.
Above: A fragrant hostess gift.
An old-fashioned pomander in the form of an orange studded with cloves is a sweet-smelling ornament to present to a holiday host and takes only minutes to make. (I currently have one hanging in my bedroom, and it’s filling the whole room with a rich, spicy scent.)
Materials
- An orange
- Ribbon
- Straight pin
- Whole cloves (about 50)
Instructions
Begin by cutting your ribbon into two lengths that fit around the circumference of your orange. (Measure the ribbon using the fruit as a guide and cut accordingly.) Wrap each length of ribbon around the orange in opposite directions to create four quarters, with the ribbon ends overlapping over the orange stem. Using a straight pin, secure all four ends by sticking the pin through both ribbon and orange.
Using the ribbon as a guide, begin to stick the cloves into the orange rind. Whole cloves are big enough to pierce the orange rind without requiring you to use any special tools. You can arrange the cloves in whatever pattern you’d like. I started by making a straight line of cloves down the center of each quarter and then added a smaller line of cloves to either side.
After you have the cloves in place, take another small piece of ribbon and thread it underneath the crossed ribbon (opposite from where you pinned the ribbon ends). Tie the ends of the ribbon into a knot to create a loop, and you’re done.
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