DIY Death Star Christmas Ornament

When you’re a Star Wars fan, the holidays are a great opportunity to celebrate your inner rebel. Let this Death Star Christmas ornament bring festive geek spirit into your home! With only an orange and a few cloves, you can create a fun pomander that smells fantastic during the winter months.

As a huge Star Wars fan, I’m always excited by Star Wars twists on traditional concepts.

Last Christmas, I was in front of a table preparing home-made Christmas ornaments, ready to make a traditional orange pomander. However after the first line of cloves, the pomander struck me as resembling a familiar artificial moon. The Death Star!

Here is how to make a Death Star holiday ornament, step by step with easy instructions. It’s truly quite simple but you’ll have to learn patience. Since the Force is strong in you, I know that rush you will not as the end result is a labor of Star Wars love.

What You Need for the DIY Death Star Christmas Ornament

• Fresh orange (the larger the better)
• Whole cloves
• Fine tip black marker
• Round cookie cutters
• Soft measuring tape
• Soft (paint)brush

Death Star Map & Design

Before you start, I suggest you print this map of the Death Star or get it up on your screen (link here).

It will give you a good idea of how you are going to design your pomander.

Basically, the Death Star is:

• a sphere with a thicker meridian round the middle (equitorial trench)
• a smaller inverted partial sphere in the upper part, about 1/4 of the size of the sphere (superlaser)
• rectangle shapes all around arranged along 4 or 5 horizontal lines (city sprawls)
• a larger trench right beneath the superlaser

DIY Death Star Christmas Ornament Instructions

Depending on the size of the orange and the size of your cloves, you might be able to finesse on the various elements.

With a measuring tape, measure the distance between the two orange “poles” and mark the middle of the longitude with 4 dots along the middle. Then, place the measuring tape along the 4 dots and draw dots every half inch (or centimeter) along the meridian.

This is the meridian.

Next up, the superlaser. I used a cookie cutter to draw the outer line of the superlaser sphere.

I then joined the inner circle to the outer circle with more dots.

You’re now ready to see some initial results. Push in the cloves gently in the orange, being careful not to crush the clove heads. The cloves will pierce the orange skin and go right in. Do so to cover at least each dot.

Now’s the time to trace the outline of the two other horizontal lines. I used round cookie cutters and placed them around the orange’s “poles”, then marked more dots just so.

When you have your outlines, it’s time to go a-piercing.

Pierce away until you see the main shapes and lines of the Death Star very clearly. Feeling overzealous? You can add more cloves to join the lines. Here is my Death Star 2 after almost a full jar of cloves.

 May the cloves be with you!