Handmade Christmas Crackers

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Day 27 – Cook, Craft, Create: December 2012

I made my own Christmas crackers this year for when my family came to us for Boxing Day lunch. So, for day 27 of Cook, Craft, Create: December: 2012 I’m going to show you how you can make your own festive crackers! They are so easy to make and you can decorate them as simply or as elaborately as you like.

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

To make your own crackers, you’re going to need toilet roll tubes – and lots of them! You’ll need 3 per cracker; so if you need to make 10 crackers, you’re going to need 30 tubes!

You need cracker snaps – I bought mine from ebay, and I bought some small gifts to go inside my crackers – a little nativity set and some sweets. For the hats and jokes I just bought some cheap £1 crackers from Poundland and took the hats out of them!

To decorate I had some stickers and some coloured raffia. I also used brown paper to wrap my crackers – you could use gift wrap.

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

I started off by taping a snap inside a tube – it will be the middle tube when it comes to assembling the crackers.

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

I then wrapped my tiny gift inside the paper hat, and popped that along with the sweets into the middle tube as well.

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

I laid my tubes out like this…

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

…placing the ends of the snap inside each one and leaving about a ¾” gap between. The paper needs to have some give at the end, so leave about an inch length on either end as well – not close like I’ve shown here. The width needs to be enough to wrap around the tubes.

I carefully rolled the paper around the tubes and secured with some tape, and then tied raffia between the middle and end tubes as shown – pulling them tight so that the gifts inside wouldn’t fall through! I then folded the excess end paper into the ends of the tubes to give a neat finish.

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

With the crackers assembled, I stuck stickers onto the front – keeping my crackers quite simple.

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

I’ve been wanting and meaning to make my own Christmas crackers for years, and finally I have gotten around to doing it! I am so pleased with how they turned out – and they were so easy! They just need a little forethought in that you have to buy snaps and prizes for the inside, but the sky’s the limit as far as decorating goes. I know I’ve seen some beautiful handmade crackers over the years.

I’ve also got lots more Christmas Crafts for Adults for you to try out. Right-click and open a new tab to read next.

Handmade Christmas Crackers | The Purple Pumpkin Blog

And you don’t have to keep these just for Christmas! Any event worth celebrating can have a cracker made for it…why not give them a try some time?

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