Make your own Christmas crackers

The amount of landfill rubbish at the end of Christmas lunch always takes the edge off my enjoyment of it.  However, if you re-use any pretty paper you have (newspaper, magazines, wrapping paper, kids’ drawings) to make Christmas crackers you can enjoy the novelties without the guilt.  

Here’s great template for homemade crackers using any piece of A4 paper.  I’ve also created one using the dimensions of Mollie Makes to use all the beautiful craft paper I’ve been saving up from there.  You can buy cracker snaps and paper hats online, write your own jokes and add something fun, but useful (for example a small soap, herb seeds, chocolates wrapped in a twist of baking paper). For the more adventurous among us, add a dare to make Christmas dinner really go with a bang!

Download the printable templates and instructions from here.

Hints and tips

Choosing paper – you’ll need paper that is relatively thick so that it doesn’t tear to easily.  If you are using newspaper or thin wrapping paper then you may want to use two pieces per cracker.

For extra green points – recycle paper from newspaper, magazines, wrapping paper, children’s drawings, maths homework, the possibilities are endless. Just make sure the content is appropriate for your dinner guests! There are some things you don’t want to see at your Christmas dinner table.  Biodegradable sticky tape (such as the cellulose tape made by Sellotape) will also help to reduce plastic waste.

Pull the look together – you can mix and match your papers and using the same brightly coloured ribbon or string will help to pull the look together so that it doesn’t look like you’ve tipped the contents of your recycling box onto the table.

Ensure a neat finish – trim down the cracker snaps if you need to.  Don’t tie the ends too tightly or you will rip the paper.  Make sure the ends of the crackers are rounded and even.  Trim off any paper that sticks out.