Making Your Own Christmas Crackers
A Special Gift Wrap
These large bonbons, which make a bang when opened and contain small gifts, are called Christmas crackers and originally come from English-speaking regions.
Christmas crackers are well suited to be used as gifts for a party host, to spruce things up during Carnival or New Year’s Eve, or even as a humorous way to wrap gift vouchers and money.
Material List for Self-Made Christmas Crackers
For the Christmas Crackers You’ll Need:
- Toilet paper rolls, one for each Christmas cracker
- Gift, crepe, or packing paper
- Bast fibre or ribbon
- Ignition strips (or optionally without)
- Small photos
- Scissors, glue, tape, and writing implements
And for the Contents:
- Individually wrapped sweets such as bonbons, gum, or chocolate
- Deco-confetti, glitter stars, or sequins
- Dice, game tokens, figures, or other small gifts
- Slips of paper with messages, poems, and gift vouchers
- Small photos
Christmas Cracker Crafting Instructions
1. Glue the roll
If you’d like to use ignition strips for the typical popping noise, it’s best to attach these at the beginning to the toilet paper roll to the left and right of the ignition area with adhesive tape. The ends of the cardboard strips should protrude from both ends of the roll.
Cut out paper sized about 30 x 15 cm for your Christmas cracker and wrap this around the roll. Leave about 10 cm of paper extra on both ends and glue it to the middle of the roll. On one end, you can already bind the paper together with bast fibre or ribbon to create the form of a bonbon.
2. Fill the Christmas cracker
Through the open side, you can now fill the Christmas cracker with confetti, sweets, figures, slips of paper, and small photos. You can then also bind together the open end with ribbon or bast fibre. Make sure that the ignition strips are securely fastened to both sides.
3. Decorate
Now you can glue photos to the Christmas cracker, draw/paint on it, and add other decorations.
Tip
Instead of toilet paper rolls, you could also use construction paper. Simply cut out 10 x 20 cm pieces, roll them up, and secure them together with tape.
When You Don’t Have Much Time
You could alternatively buy already-made Christmas crackers and then decorate them yourself. The disadvantage here is that the filling won’t be personalised as in the variant described above. However, most of the time, it’s possible to carefully open the Christmas crackers, unfold them, and then place your own filling in them. Some stores also carry Christmas cracker sleeves you can buy and then fill yourself.
