HOW TO:

The last minute cracker 

POV: You want a beautiful handmade Christmas but all you’ve got is empty loo roll tubes and last year’s wrapping paper.

Crackers are an easy craft to make and so much more fun than store-bought snaps because you can load them up with things people actually want (and write dirtier jokes, audience dependant). 

YOU’LL NEED (per cracker)

• An A4 piece of wrapping paper, a paper shopping bag, or page from a magazine. Or keep it simple and do a white sheet of A4 printer paper.

• Empty loo roll

• 60 cm Plain string

• 60 cm Ribbon

• Sticky tape

• Scissors

• Pencil

• The last minute cracker print out (which you can download for free below)

• Things to go inside (a joke, a paper crown, a sweet, etc) (glitter, if you’re bringing the cracker to someone’s house you hate and you want to make your feelings known). 

*Optional: a cracker snap. It makes it less “last minute”, but it does make for a very professional cracker

1. If you’re using last year’s gift wrap, remove any left over tape and find a nice smoothish bit to work with. Lay it on table, right side down. 

2. Lay your template down onto the wrong side of your wrapping paper and trace around it. 

3. Cut around your pencil line, and snip out each of the little diamonds that you’ve drawn. 

4. Fold along the diamonds on each end to create a crease.

5. Lay your empty loo roll at the edge of your paper so that the rows of diamonds are on the ends of the cylinder). Tape the paper to the roll so it doesn’t shift in the next steps.

6. Tuck your cracker filling inside the loo roll. 

7. **Optional* tape down your cracker snap so it runs across the paper, parallel to the loo roll. 

8. Finish rolling the paper around and tape it in place (you can use a tape loop if you want it to be invisible, though clear tape is pretty subtle). 

9. The cut out diamonds will help the cracker form into it’s classic shape without too much scrunching and twisting, but you will have to do a little work here. Pinch the paper around the middle of the diamonds and squeeze it a few times until it sits nicely on the end of the empty loo roll tube.

10. Tightly tie a 30 cm piece of plain string around each end of the cracker in the middle of the diamonds. Trim ends close to the knot

11. Tie a 30 cm piece of decorative ribbon into a bow over top of the plain string. 

    Ta da! You’re done. Now you just have to make one for each guest…