Home made Christmas Crackers

[Frog253]

I'd like to buy a basic kit to make some Christmas Crackers this year and wondered if anyone had any recommendations? Ideally it would be the cracker with the bang and the hat so we could add the gift and the joke.

The catalogue Yellow Moon have them and i just ordered them so don't know what they're like but they have the snap and joke and hats so you can use/discard what you like. Think I paid £3.99 for a set of 6.

HTH

Inner - Loo roll
Bangs - Local village post office (sell them in packs of 20) or try Amazon
Hats - stolen from works Xmas do's
Jokes - Google 'Cracker Jokes' - print and cut
Gifts - Max £1 from Charity shop/Pound shop/Car boot
Outer - Recycled shiny wrapping paper
Ties - Ribbon, decoratively curled

Voila

think you can also buy the bits at Hobbycraft. My mom always made them growing up....was rather disappointed when I got a store bought one for the first time. You can fit mini bottles of booze in homemade ones!

We actually ask guests to bring one each. It is GREAT fun to see what things people have sourced for £1

The year of the peg bag was one remembered with fond memories.....

These are the cracker snaps we have but they are out of stock here

OK Strickly, do your home made ones pull apart easily? I like your idea BUT my mother made them along your lines last year and we ended up deconstructing and taking the bang out and banging it separately, (after we had pullled and pulled and pulled).

This is one of our contributions to the IL's Xmas dinner, we need to make about 15.

ooh my mum did this one year and never repeated it unfortunately (I'm too lazy I'm afraid). Anyway, she bought magazines for everyone (not too fat ones) and they formed the body of the cracker. She didn't manage to find long snaps but we all pulled a party popper instead! Was worth the lack of "pop". Mag was great and she had put in hats and nice travel sized things...

I got some of the kits you mentioned in Poundland last year to do with dd1, they were tucked away on the stationary aisle right on the corner of the bottom shelf rather than being with the rest of the Christmas stuff. The crackers were basic silver ones but with a festive sticker (or several in our case) & bit of fancying up they did the job fine & the little gifts were something for each of us rather than random stuff you get in bought ones

I think as long as the paper gives way fairly easily and you are holding on to the snap then they should be ok. I cannot recall having major problems and we have been doing 'bring a cracker' for a number of years. However our abilities at cracker pulling may have been enhanced

here are lots of kits if you decide against it

We made home-made ones one year when the DC were small. They were crap

Must remember to buy some pre-made ones!

I got some lovely ones from John Lewis. Very good looking and ready to pop a present inside. Were quite reasonable too