Making our own Christmas Crackers

Tip Junkie – Tip Me TuesdayIt’s less than a month until Christmas and the countdown is on!! Have you discovered Xmasclock yet? How cool is that – we’ve been watching it for the past couple of years 🙂

Today we started making our own Christmas Crackers. I wanted them to tie in nicely with our Christmas theme colour of yellow with a touch of red. (My young son chose the yellow as it is his favourite colour…something to do with it being the colour of Pikachu!)

We saved up empty toilet paper rolls, and had some yellow and red crepe paper left over from his birthday party earlier this year. I had some party poppers left over to go in the crackers, and a few Christmas stickers for decoration.

I bought packs of Bon Bon snaps from Spotlight, $1.99 for a pack of 10. Several rolls of ribbon from a discount shop, and we decided that little bottles of bubbles would go nicely inside, they came from a discount shop too.

I did an internet search for printable Christmas jokes, which I printed up to add to the crackers. You can find some links on my Pinterest board  http://www.pinterest.com/fifi234/christmas-2014/

I started by cutting the yellow crepe paper long enough to go round the toilet paper rolls twice, and wide enough to look generous.

The rolls were filled with a Christmas joke, a party popper, small bottle of bubbles, and a bon bon snap. We put a thin line of glue along the length of the TP roll to hold the crepe paper tight as we rolled it around, then put a couple of little dots at the end to hold it closed.

I found it easiest to then tie the ends next, because if your goodies fall out it is a bit tricky getting them back in when wrapped in crepe paper. I used 40cm of ribbon at each end to give a generous looking bow. If you use a different sized ribbon (mine is 15mm wide), then you would need to work out what length looks good for you.

I then cut a narrow strip of red crepe paper to fit around the middle. A couple of dots of glue fixes it in place at the back. On the front we added a cute Christmas sticker.

Don’t forget the very important step of testing the noise-makers. Yep, both the Bon Bon snaps and the party poppers work!

And here they are!

I think they will look great on our Christmas table 🙂

Have you got any really funny Christmas jokes? We still have more crackers to make, so would like to find some more good ones!

And please share what you like in your Christmas crackers. We decided no-one likes the silly paper hats and plastic crap that you usually get in them. I think the best bit of a cracker is the corny joke 😉

How is your Christmas preparation coming along?

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