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Apple Star Natural Ornaments

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Excalibur Dehydrator which we received to create this cute Christmas craft.

I can’t believe that it took me ages to discover the star inside the apple – I’d always cut it the “wrong” way to find it and instead ended up with pips and tear drop shapes but no stars. Suddenly finding out after almost 35 years (it was a while ago) that there was a star inside was an eye opening. This year we’re decorating our tree with a few new homemade ornaments – we have Christmas Scented Salt Dough Star Garlands, Crystal Snowballs and Nutcracker Peg Dolls. So now we are adding in some natural Apple Star Ornaments for the tree as well.

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

Materials Needed

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An apple

Twine (I love the more natural look of it over bakers twine, but that would work as well)

Needle

Optional – Epsom Salts, Glue, Glitter which you can add to decorate it and make it sparkle

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

Create another natural ornament using real wool roving to make an easy beginner needle felted penguin

Creating your Apple Star Ornaments

If you’ve seen our How to make dried Citrus Fruits you will know of an oven method for drying the citrus fruits but where it can take a good 3 to 5 hours to dry at this time of the year my oven is pretty busy with Christmas Baking so I don’t really want to take up all of that time so this time, I decided to use our Dehydrator which has to be one of my new favourite gadgets.

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

With the kids help, we selected some Apples from the fruit bowl and then I explained to them about cutting them showing them the difference between slicing to show and not show the apple star inside. The decided like I did that the apple star was much prettier and we set about cutting it up.

The kids had a really good try, but the slices they cut up were way to thick for the ornaments instead we ate them up. With drying or dehydrating foods, you need thin slices to make the drying process work at it’s best so we used the thin slices that I had cut up.

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

We then followed the instruction for the Excalibur 4 tray Dehydrator laying them on the trays and switching to the Fruit Drying setting – YES it’s really that easy and then left it chugging along drying out the fruit. At the same time because of the multiple shelves within the dehydrator we also tried it out to dry some citrus fruits to also decorate the home with.

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

Once they had dried out I removed them and set them aside in a bowl which was a really pretty decoration but then the kids and I decided that we really wanted to create something more with them.

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree
Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

Using some garden twine, I cut a small section. Then pierced a hole near the top of the apple slice with the star on and thread the twine through the hole. Then tied it in a knot.

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

We also added some citrus behind the apple to create another ornament and added these to the tree as well.

Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree
Apple Star Ornaments - natural decorations you can make at home with kids to decorate the Christmas Tree

Next time we create some I’m going to add some PVA glue to them and sprinkle with Epsom salts or glitter to create crystallized apple star ornaments.

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Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

4 Comments

  1. Hi, Thanks for posting your article. How long do the decorations last? If I made them now, would they last until Christmas?

    1. Hi Helen,

      Once dried unless you are in a very humid environment they will easily last from now through Christmas and well into the new year. The oranges that I made last year are still going strong over a year later! If you live somewhere humid then coating with modge podge or a water/pva glue mix will seal them.

  2. We are planning on making these and decorating a pine tree in our back garden.

    Thanks for the great incentive.

    – Kelly

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