Hung at your front door, a dried apple wreath represents the vitality of life throughout your entire house. Hung in your study, a dried apple wreath, when the apple slices are cut to reveal their natural star, bequeaths wisdom. Hung in your bedroom, a dried apple wreath is intended to give sexy thoughts to those who love there. Hung with meaning, or just as an autumn centerpiece, a dried apple wreath is simple to make–and it uses up your surplus apples! Here’s how to make one: Before you can make a dried apple wreath, you have to dry plenty of apple slices. I like to use local, organic, unblemished apples, thinly sliced horizontally so that the middle slices reveal the natural star shape formed by the seed case inside the apple. I dry my apple slices in my dehydrator, rescuing them from my hungry children as I can to set the best-looking ones aside for my wreath. You can also, of course, hang your apple slices to dry, which many people prefer since it’s the more typically traditional method, or oven dry your apple slices, which takes the least amount of time. Next » Sometime while your apples are drying, use a piece of cardboard (I used a flat-rate envelope that a recent etsy purchase came packaged in) to make a guide for your wreath. I prefer that my dried apple wreaths not be attached to a form, but a circular guide will allow you to put your wreath together so that it looks perfect. Find a mixing bowl whose rim is the size that you’d like for the perimeter of your wreath, and trace around it onto your scrap cardboard. Freehand another circle about an inch to the inside of that first circle, cut out your new inch-thick circle, and you’ll have a guide to place under your apple wreath. Next » Center each dried apple slice on top of your wreath guide, and overlap each slice to form a circle, gluing the slices together as you go with either hot glue or an epoxy glue like E6000. The best way to glue each apple slice is underneath the part that overlaps, so that none of the glue will show–you want it to look as if the wreath is held together with magic! Next » If you do need to put on gobs of glue (and oh, do I love my gobs of glue!), then flip the wreath over to the back side and cake the glue on there, taking care that you don’t allow it to show on the front. You’ll know that you’ve glued your wreath well when it holds its form as it hangs. If there are any wobbly bits, find a way to surreptitiously give them some more glue to support them. Next » The finished dried apple wreath can be hung wherever and however you’d like. Personally, bows kind of skeeve me out, so I hang my wreaths simply, either with twine or with sticky Velcro tabs that make the mounting invisible. And yep, I’ve got one in the bedroom!
