Make Your Own Homemade Christmas Crackers

I am a big fan of Christmas Crackers, I love the excitement and anticipation of pulling a cracker at Christmas. So why not make Christmas Day go with a bang by making your own Homemade Christmas crackers. They are a super simple craft, easy to make and you can add your own unique gifts, jokes, and party hats in order to personalise your Christmas Day.

I know it is super easy it is to pick up a ready-made box of crackers from any supermarket, however, in order to get gifts that my family will use and not just tat they are often expensive and/or really wasteful. Making crackers adds some wow factor to Christmas dinner and you can match them to your theme and also to the people at the table. By making your own Christmas crackers you can personalise the treats for your guests.

If you like these then take a look at our fabulous Christmas Cracker printable templates.

How to Make DIY Christmas Crackers

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Materials

1. Wrapping paper – We are trying to use either recycled paper or recyclable paper.
2. Glue Dots (UK Link/US Link) or sticky tape, glue stick, or hot glue gun.
3. Cracker Snaps or bangers (UK Link/US Link)
4. Ribbon (UK Link/US Link) or curling ribbon
5. Ruler
6. Pair of scissors and Craft knife
7. Toilet rolls or cardboard tubes
8. Things to decorate your crackers
9. Small gifts, joke, small toys, confetti and paper crown
10. Cracker template

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How to Make Homemade Christmas Crackers

DIY Christmas Crackers are the perfect addition to your festivities. I love how you can decorate them to match your table setting and fill them for the specific recipient with small thoughtful gifts giving the day a personal touch.

Make sure you watch the how-to video here:

Cut your paper to size, ours was 12 inches by 6 inches or 30cm by 16cm (perfect for toilet-paper rolls) and to make shaping easier we cut rhomboids out of the paper like the template below.

The easiest way to do this is to draw them on and fold the paper in half and cut with scissors. Feel free to use download our template for your crackers, just print it out to size and you are all set. The secret is to make sure your tube is just slightly smaller than the centre of the paper. Cut out the diamond with a craft knife.

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Placed glue dots on each end of the paper and wrap it around the cardboard tube. or you can use a strip or tape along the cardboard rolls or edge of the paper.

Thread a cracker snap through the cardboard tube and tape it down to one side of the paper. Kids love that even homemade crackers pop!

Tie one end of the cracker with ribbon, wool or string in a bow. The cuts should gather up. You could also use curling ribbon.

Place sweets, a joke (which I printed from Nurturestores 24 Christmas jokes), a paper hat and small gift into Place sweets, a joke (which I printed from Nurturestores 24 Christmas jokes), a paper hat and small gift into the open end of the cracker then tie up the open end of your cracker. If you don’t want the cracker to rattle then add some tissue paper inside the cracker too.

Then you can accessorise and have fun decorating your homemade Christmas crackers as you choose. We used some festive ribbon and also some small tags that we had made from air drying clay.

I made Christmas crackers with two different papers so we could tell which ones were for the children.

If you make any then please do show me.

I love how you can personalise crackers for birthdays or even New Year’s – just take a look at our New Years Wish Crackers.