I grew up with British holiday traditions (even in very sunny South Africa): Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, Christmas "pudding", heavy fruit cake, and CRACKERS! I can really really happily live without all of these except crackers (and maybe Yorkshire "puds"). Unlike fireworks or champagne (or roast beef!), these things showed up only once every year - on the Xmas table. So they thrilled me as a child! The one thing my grown-up self doesn't like much is the plastic c*#p inside commercial crackers. Silly, cheap novelties that get left on the table and thrown out with all the other waste.
So this year, I was inspired to make them ... inspired by some printable soap wrappers (!) that I quickly realized were the perfect size to make "instant" cracker wrappers. I'm sharing this simple little craft because it was SUPER easy and these are a greener, thriftier version with a nice hand-made touch.
You'll need ...
- Toilet-roll inserts (if you can't collect enough, roll up some card stock)
- Tissue paper
- Ribbon
- Glue stick
- Pretty paper to customize them (2017 update - the printable soap wrappers I used are no longer available. But any Holiday printable that you can cut to size will. Search for holiday candy wrappers, printable tags and printable stationary)
- A consumable treat to pop in the cracker (I used lollipops). If you want to go affordable luxe, here's a suggestion for women: buy a deluxe sampler from Ineke Perfumes ($30 gets you an 7-fragrance sampler, each one beautifully boxed. Or from Le Labo - five for $30 but omg. Not a paid endorsement - I love the fragrances, and they fit beautifully into a cracker.)
* Optional: the "Bang" - in the USA, you can buy them here.
Cut off generously-sized pieces of tissue paper so you've got wiggle room to pull in the ends and tie them of with ribbon (if you scrimp, the paper will tear easily). One line of glue was all I needed to stick the paper down.
- Tie off one end then pop in the treat.
- Tie off the other end then neaten the edges with crimping scissors.
- All that's left to do is wrap the cracker in the paper and voila! - a great table decoration.
For an full printable cracker template (you print it out on cardstock) see Mini Eco's Crackers.
If you want to insert bangers, see this great tutorial at Not Martha, this one at Talk Crafty to Me or this one at Oh Happy Day.
Poppytalk shows you how to create eco-friendly crackers using fabric napkins.
Add your comment
All comments are moderated. If your goal is to insert spam links to other sites, your comment will not be published.