How to make your own Christmas crackers

CHRISTMAS crackers can be quite costly, especially if you buy the ones with small gifts inside. Why not make your own? They are really easy to do.

You’ll need

Empty toilet paper rolls

Cracker snaps (not necessary unless you want a loud bang when you pull the cracker)

Christmas wrapping paper

Sticky tape

Florist ribbon or thin silk ribbon

Little gifts, sweets or chocolates

To make

Take an empty toilet paper roll and measure the correct length of festive wrapping paper (for how many crackers you wish to make). Make sure you leave about six centimetres of extra paper at each end. The paper will be about 22cm in length and 12cm wide for each cracker.

When buying gifts make sure they are tiny. Sweets and chocolates are great for children’s crackers or go to a thrift shop and find tiny plastic whistles, etc; Lip salve or lipstick for women or a small tube of hand cream, chocolate balls or Lindor chocolates. For men, you could buy a miniature bottle of liquor or biltong (put into a small sandwich packet and tie) before putting in the cracker.

Cracker snaps can usually be found at a China mall store, insert in the filled cracker.

Place the filled toilet roll on the paper and wrap, sealing with sticky tape. Take both ends and scrunch up the paper, tying with the ribbon. You can use name tags to personalise the crackers, so you know which one is for who and these then also serve as place names for the table.

Once made, place them all under the Christmas tree as décor until Christmas Eve or Christmas day when you’ll place them on the dining table. Enjoy!