Christmas Crackers

Hi Crafty Friends,

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful day yesterday!

Each year for the past forty odd years or so I have been creating my own Christmas crackers to use on Christmas Day. A few months ago when I was browsing an online store I discovered that Tonic Studios had a Christmas Crackers die set, so of course I had to buy it.

I really liked how these turned out, this year I only needed to make 7 crackers. Even though it was only 7, these were pretty time consuming, die cutting all those decorative pieces. So if I were making more I would probably make them a little simpler ... maybe next year!

This year I went with the traditional colors of red and green for the crackers and then decorated them with gold. I also found some red and green ribbon in my stash from years back that worked well for tying the crackers.

The cracker die set, comes with 6 different options for decorating the crackers. I decorated mine with three of the different dies .... diagonal stripes; stars and vine. Doing this meant that I could die cut 3 different decorative pieces at a time, plus I could have a different pattern depending on what was inside the crackers, so I could put something special in for each person.

I made red crackers for the girls and green for the boys which also helped with knowing what was inside.

To decorate the crackers I used the middle snowflake from the Snowflakes die set from Elizabeth Craft Designs. I die cut the snowflake from gold cardstock and then embellished the snowflakes using red and/or green Nuvo Drops. 

One final photo of all the green crackers I made for the men/boys.

Paper: Red; Green; Gold

Dies: Christmas Cracker Treat Box - Tonic Studios; Snowflakes - Elizabeth Craft Designs

Other: Autumn Red Nuvo Crystal Drops; Woodland Green Nuvo Crystal Drops; Red and Green Sheer Ribbon