Kicking off our simple Christmas decorations is our Homemade Star Garland. I am on a total garland kick this Christmas season. So far this year, I have made Dried Orange Slice Garland for the living room hutch. I have also made Popcorn Garland for the dining room wall.
HERE ARE THE MATERIALS YOU WILL NEED FOR YOUR HOMEMADE STAR GARLAND:
- 2 cups flour
- 1 cup salt
- 1 cup water
- 2 tsp cinnamon or any other fragrant spice you would like to add.
- yarn, twine or string
making your dough
Preheat your oven to 170 degrees.
If you are making a small garland, you can cut this recipe in half. The garland I made was about 10ft long and I only used half of the stars.
After you have all of your ingredients together, measure them out and mix it all together. I add the water slowly, stirring as I pour.
Once everything is mixed up, roll out your dough about 1/8 inch thick. I wanted star garland, but you can use any shape you would like. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and place your cut our stars onto the baking sheet. Close but not touching.
Place in your preheated oven and bake for 1 hour. After an hour, take out of the oven and flip all the stars over and bake another hour. Check after the 2nd hour and if still a bit soft, give it some more time.
Once done, take out of the oven and let cool.
How to string the star garland
The first step is to choose what type of string to use. I usually would use a brown twine, but I was out. I chose to use a cream colored yarn.
Next you decide how long you want your garland to be once hung up. I chose to make mine 10ft long. Add 8 extra inches to the total length of your garland. This gives you enough room at the ends to tie hoops and accounts for the extra string needed for all the knots you will tie.
To start, tie a loop on one end. I left 4 inches, then threaded a star and tied it to that space and then threaded another star, leaving 4 inches of space from the last star and tied it into place. I repeated this step the entire length of the star garland.
Once I got to the end, I left 4 inches at the end and tied another loop.
Places you can hang your star garland
You can hang on a wall, drape over a hutch or an entry way table. You could even make an extremely long garland and use it in place of ribbon on the Christmas tree. Keep out of reach of dogs, I know my dog was pretty interested in what I was hanging up. He will eat anything and this is pretty high in salt.
I had half of my stars left and I laid them down on my linen dresser in the dining room. They paired well with the leftover orange slices I had leftover from the dried orange slice garland I made last week.
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