I discovered a way to make a cute wreath with citrus peels. I saw a lady do this on a social media feed and thought how cute the wreaths looked, mostly for fall and Thanksgiving season, however. Also, it is kind of neat because using citrus peels is like recycling something that would have ended up in the trash or compost.

Another bonus is my husband really enjoys eating citrus fruits. And this time of year, pomegranates are in the grocery stores, so I used those as well. The darker red peel color worked really well against the colors of the oranges, clementines, even grapefruit. You could use limes or lemons as well.

It is super easy, and I happen to have crimped single wreath rings in my stock of craft supplies, but this could easily be done with a clothing wire hanger cut and formed into a circle. I had my husband cut my crimped wire frame so I could push the peels onto my wreath frame, and I got underway.

Anytime he or I had an orange or other citrus fruits as a snack, I asked him to save the peels. Then I tore them into pieces. It doesn’t matter the shape or size of the torn pieces. Can be random.

Above you can see the pomegranate peels, and I believe next to it is the grapefruit peels. It sure did smell good when I pushed the grapefruit peels onto the wire.

I did like grouping them, so all the peels were facing the same direction as it added more color.

In this photo above, I did some back-to-back and didn’t really like it – I preferred all the same direction to add more color so all the peel-colored sides face the same direction as they were stacked on.

This was when I finished. I just needed to add a bow. I think this is a great wreath to make for Thanksgiving. And they probably would be adorable in an even smaller wreath size. I think this was a 10″ wreath frame size. There are so many decorative options with this – could do some embellishments if you liked for fun.

My husband made this loop at one end and then made a little hook on the other to reattach the frame ends together when done putting all the peels onto it.

There are the pomegranate seeds and a clementine also used. They were yummy together – and pretty colors. It just takes a while to collect all the peels. I would just keep them in a bowl and then try to attach them to the frame rather quickly before they were too dry.

I forgot to take a pic of the bow part and now it is stored away since we are onto Christmas decorations. But this was an easy, affordable, and creative little craft project. I recommend wearing gloves because the wire started to blacken my hands while working on it – due to probably the acid of the citrus – I don’t know.

It dries naturally and smells nice while it does so. I suppose you could add essential oils on it later to add more fragrance to it.

Cathy Testa

Date of post: 12/6/2025

And PS – sorry I didn’t post this sooner. Making this in early November is best timing. Good one to remember for next year.