Christmas Crackers

I have this theory that next year I'm going to try to post regularly, at least twice a month (not as regularly as some people, I know, but better than I've been lately!). I certainly do enough stuff, and when we move into our new house and I have a craft room (well, MUM and I have a craft room) then I'll even have the space to do stuff! If I do stuff then I should blog about it, right?

At least that's the theory.

Another thing I want to do next year is stop being a 'gunner'. You know the sort. They say they're gonna do this, and they're gonna do that! I could just stop saying I'll do stuff, but I think it would be better if I actually followed through. And I can hear a certain friend in PK telling me that YES, following through would be good. I promise I'll make your Marvin and finish your gloves soon Sam. PROMISE PROMISE PROMISE

Unless of course I get sidetracked by something new and shiny!

Ahem!

Anyway, enough about that. New Year's Resolutions can be discussed later. Today I wanna show off the Christmas Crackers I've made.
My brother and his wife, and the local parish priest, are all going to be at our place for Christmas lunch and since regular christmas crackers are usually full of crappy toys and crappier jokes I decided I wanted to make some better ones. I tried it once before but we glued the snaps down too much so instead of popping they kind of just mocked us by not doing a thing, so then we had to pull the crackers apart and that just wasn't fun at all.


But this year, I have got it right! I tested a couple before hand, and I think they should be all good. So here you are, a step by step run down of what I did.

First I had to gather all the pieces together.

The toilet rolls (thankfully we've been saving these for ages - they're great for growing seeds in, and then when a plant is a bit bigger you just put the whole thing into the ground).

The snaps - I got these on sale months ago. It's amazing that I actually managed to find them again. Woohoo.

The presents - Da and I raided The Reject Shop and found goodies that were decent and cheap. Much better than a bright orange plastic toothpick, which was one of the things I got in a cracker one year.

The party hats - I made each of these, each is different and I managed to use up some of the stickers I've been hoarding for years. Two layers of tissue paper, so they should hopefully not rip as soon as they get put on a head.

The jokes -  Everybody has different jokes and hopefully they're not TOO lame, but there has to be some lameness, after all that's part of the tradition right?

The shiny papers to decorate.  The gold paper was actually wrapped around a present to my father from one of his staff members. He unwrapped it in front of her today, so I could then pilfer the paper. Yay!

So first of all, a couple of dabs of glue to stick down the snaps, and then I wrapped them in the red shiny crepe paper.

A piece of gold curling ribbon at one end, to stop the present falling out while I do the rest of the decorating and stuff.

I folded up the hat, gift and jokes and popped it into a cracker. I got better at this after I'd done a couple, but some of the pressies were a bit tricky. I just hope that the hats are ok and not all torn and stuff. Oh well. I have lots more tissue paper and glue, so if anybody thinks they can get out of wearing it by tearing it, tough luck! MWAHAHAHAHAHA

Once I'd stuffed each cracker I could add another bit of curling ribbon.

Then I put some pretty gold paper around the middle. Our colour scheme is red and gold this year so I wanted to try and colour co-ordinate everything.

Final touch was a little chip board cut out to make each one look all Christmassy (if the shiny and the red and the gold and the cracker shape wasn't enough!). I got these things free with a magazine, like most of my craft kit, and since most of the images that they had were of Winter things, I've not really used them. That and I never get around to actually making as much as I'd like to make. But I got to use them today, so I'm chuffed.

One of the crackers has two piccies on it. That's becuase it is for my brother. I picked a special thing for him to have in his cracker. So the Toy for Tim is the one with the Two Tiny Trees!

Ok, so there you have it. My Christmas Crackers. Hopfully they'll go off with a bang (pardon the pun) and people will like their little presents and so on. If I actually manage to get my act together and post about it, I'll let you know what people think. So far Mum and Dad think they look snazzy, so thats something.

Ta ta for now.