It’s a Cracker!

Christmas starts early with crafters, so to kick off, here’s a free template and instructions for you to make your own Christmas crackers.
Apart from making your own table crackers, these are great as ornaments to brighten up your tree or to use as small gift boxes.  They are also great fun to make and really quick and easy.
Use your favourite background papers or why not pop over to The Wendy House to find some great background prints to use and some pre-printed designs for the Christmas crackers like those shown in the image above.
Download the .pdf template for free – follow the link below

Click here to Download the free template

What you need

Template or pre-printed cracker image
Scissors
Double sided sticky tape
Ruler
Paper trimmer (preferred)
Scoring tool – I used an old credit card
Christmas ribbon – about half a meter for each cracker

Instructions

Print off your cracker or template.
If you are using the template, cut out the template and draw the outline onto your backing card, then come back to this point.

Cut out the design on the cut lines (darker lines).  I prefer to use a paper trimmer on longer lines.
You don’t need to do the diamond shapes at this stage, just the outline.

Using the ruler and scoring tool, score all the fold lines (paler lines) and don’t forget the ones that join up the diamond shapes.


Fold ALL your scored lines, this makes it much easier to put the cracker together.

Fold under the end of the cracker so that the middle of the diamond shape is on the fold and with your card folded, snip out the diamond shapes and the two end pieces.  This is the easiest way to cut out the diamonds.

Put some double sided sticky tape on the tab ends, don’t forget to put this on the small tabs as well and fold up your cracker to meet the top edge.
Now you have a nice cracker shape and you can now pinch the cracker neck pieces and the cracker shape is done.

Tie a piece of ribbon around both neck pieces and you have your cracker.
Enjoy!