CartridgeSave challenged us to get crafty in the run up to Christmas and come up with our own exquisitely decorated Christmas Cracker using their printable instructions for making Christmas Crackers.
On the CartridgeSave website you will find a series of printable instructions for making popular Christmas crafts such as paper-wreaths, paper angels, an advent calendar and a mitten-shaped notebook.
Lara (4) and I sat down this Sunday afternoon to make our Christmas crackers. I will admit that attempt number one was a bit of a flop... while Lara very much enjoyed rolling the paper around a toilet roll, it all came unstuck when we had to twist the ends of the cracker.
Anyway, after a bit of internet wizardry I discovered the secret to a beautiful Christmas Cracker is to cut small slits all around the area that you need to twist. So Mummy set to with a craft knife and after about a million practice runs I finally got the hang of things. Once I was happy with the process I fished out some shiny Christmas card to make our sparkly crackers.
Lara helped me fill the crackers with toys, jokes and hats and then she got decorating.
Lara has a wall full of craft kit so she busied herself for well over an hour cutting, sticking and asking for my advice. We worked together on a couple of the designs - she insisted that I needed to use the gold glitter glue (then the lid fell off and I got gold fingers, gold arms, gold face etc.) but I love the fact that this Christmas our crackers on the table will have been Lara's work and I hope she feels proud.
On the CartridgeSave website you will find a series of printable instructions for making popular Christmas crafts such as paper-wreaths, paper angels, an advent calendar and a mitten-shaped notebook.
Lara (4) and I sat down this Sunday afternoon to make our Christmas crackers. I will admit that attempt number one was a bit of a flop... while Lara very much enjoyed rolling the paper around a toilet roll, it all came unstuck when we had to twist the ends of the cracker.
Anyway, after a bit of internet wizardry I discovered the secret to a beautiful Christmas Cracker is to cut small slits all around the area that you need to twist. So Mummy set to with a craft knife and after about a million practice runs I finally got the hang of things. Once I was happy with the process I fished out some shiny Christmas card to make our sparkly crackers.
Lara helped me fill the crackers with toys, jokes and hats and then she got decorating.
Lara has a wall full of craft kit so she busied herself for well over an hour cutting, sticking and asking for my advice. We worked together on a couple of the designs - she insisted that I needed to use the gold glitter glue (then the lid fell off and I got gold fingers, gold arms, gold face etc.) but I love the fact that this Christmas our crackers on the table will have been Lara's work and I hope she feels proud.
