Vintage Inspired Homemade DIY Christmas Crackers

Vintage Inspired Christmas Crackers: Simple tutorial for making your own DIY Christmas crackers out of inexpensive vintage Little Golden books -so adorable!

If you’ve ever wanted to make your own DIY Christmas crackers, complete with the signature pop, these are a great addition to your festive season.  These are fun to make and fill with whatever you like.  Since our Christmas crackers are vintage inspired, I used some vintage Christmas storybook pages as the paper.  They turned out so cute.  I don’t think I can ever go back to store bought Christmas crackers again.

Christmas Cracker Tradition

Christmas crackers are a Christmas tradition, first created in London.  They’re traditionally used for table decorations during the holidays.  Everyone holds the ends of the cracker and pops them open.  They have a special cracker snap inside, so they pop with a real crack.  Inside the shop-bought Christmas crackers there’s always a few different treats.  These always add a little wow factor to your table settings, and a tradition that many people look forward to.  An easy way to make sure the party crackers fit your own personal color scheme and Christmas decor is to make your own.  They’re not hard to make and so much fun to personalize your own crackers.

It’s that time of year when we’re all running out of steam. Christmas is almost here, and most of us are ready to start celebrating, instead of finishing last minute projects. When I decided to do a vintage inspired Christmas theme this year, I came up with the idea of using old Christmas Little Golden Books to make some DIY Christmas crackers for the table this year. Today I put them together and I really love how they turned out. Luckily they are pretty simple to make -so even if you’re getting tired like me, this one is pretty doable. 😉

DIY Christmas Cracker Materials:

• Little Golden Christmas Books
• Christmas cracker snaps
• toilet paper rolls
• paper hats
• jokes
• chocolates
• confetti
• ribbon or yarn

Little Golden Christmas Books

You need a few supplies to make your homemade Christmas crackers, the most important for ours being some Christmas Little Golden Books. We upcycled these books, by using the book pages to wrap our handmade Christmas crackers.  I have to admit I did feel a little guilty tearing the pages out of the books to make these. Must be the teacher in me. 😉 But, since I found them for .99 at a second hand store, they were probably even cheaper than buying pretty scrapbook paper, or wrapping paper. If you were really opposed to ruining a book, you could colour photocopy them, which would also work for someone who couldn’t find them second hand. You could also use colour photocopies of any favourite holiday book, or even a library book as your decorative paper.

The little golden books are really common at the thrift store.  They’re easy to identify too, because they all have the distinct gold book spines.

Crackers

Along with the books, you’ll also need the cracker part of the Christmas cracker. Good news, they’re available at craft stores around the holidays.  These craft supplies are usually sold in a pack of 12, perfect for holiday entertaining.  The craft store also sometimes offers some treats for inside the crackers, like the signature paper crown hats, jokes, and prizes.  Look for those, or make your own.  You can also look for the crackers on-line.  The party poppers are inexpensive, and make these homemade crackers feel so authentic, so I strongly suggest that you don’t skip this party.

Other Supplies

If you want to make homemade Christmas crackers, then get saving your TP rolls.  You can use toilet roll tubes, but you can also use paper towel rolls, or wrapping paper cardboard tube, cut to the right length.

DIY Christmas Cracker Fillings

Paper Hats

The cracker fillings are an important part of Christmas crackers.  The contents of the cracker usually include fun paper party hats, a joke and a treat in them. I made some simple hats out of tissue paper (let’s hope my head size is average) for my own version of the traditional tissue paper crowns. You can also sometimes buy the traditional paper crown insert, where ever you buy the cracker insert pieces.

 

Christmas Jokes

For the cheesy Christmas jokes, print our free Christmas jokes here.  They’re available free to subscribers, in our Free Resource Library.  Subscribe for instant access, download, print on your home printer, and tuck them into your own homemade Christmas crackers. 

Little Gifts or Treats

The little gifts were a little trickier for me. I always love the weird stuff you get in store bought crackers, but I have to admit, when was the last time I used a mini screwdriver, magnifying glass, or tape measure? I love a small gift, so what’s as good as a mini gadget? Booze and chocolate.

I know you want to come to my house for Christmas dinner. 😉 I picked up some boozy chocolate, cause what would be better to start off a Christmas dinner with your whole fam damily than a shot and some chocolate?

For the kiddos I used some mini chocolate bars.  Any kind of candy is a great addition.  Candy canes feel very festive.  Any kind of wrapped candy would work well.

Any small gift would be a great addition.  Get as fancy as you would like.  You could even personalize the gifts for the whole family.  Just be sure to add a name onto the crackers.  If you go to the trouble of adding personalized small trinkets for everyone you want to make sure they get the right one.  This is such a fun personal touch.  Your guests would love thoughtful gifts.

For small children, small toys would be a great little prize inside.  Anything small enough to fit in would work well.  Things like a mini car, toy jewelry, a small ball, or marbles are just a few fun ideas.

Lastly, I also threw in a bit of sparkle with some glittery confetti…cause I love a little glitz, and I’ll have to vacuum after anyway.

How To Make DIY Christmas Crackers:

To make the cracker, just tear out a piece of the book, wrap it around your cardboard tube and glue it to secure it.  We used a glue stick.  Double-sided tape would work well for this step too.

Next, tape the cracker inside of the cardboard tube.  You need to use tape to hold the cracker in place.  Position the cracker strip so that the ends are sticking out, and they’ll be easy to hang onto when it comes time to pop them open.  The cracker strips that I used were a little long, or my book pages were a little short, so I just trimmed them at the ends.

Now, tie one end of the cracker, by gently gathering in the paper at one end.  You’ll want to do this step gently so that you don’t accidentally tear the book page as you gather it together at the end of the tube.  I used pom pom yarn and trim and tinsel to add more of the vintage vibe.  You could also use a piece of ribbon for this step.  Choose some that isn’t too thick, in a color that compliments your paper.

Then, at the open end of the cracker, load in your paper hat, joke, and treats.  You can also include a little fancy Christmas confetti for added fun.  The next step once your goodies are all inside your homemade Christmas crackers, tie up the other end.

These turned out so well.  They’re such a great addition to our Christmas table on Christmas day, and a great way to personalize things with your color scheme, or theme.  They turned out almost too pretty to use. They’d be to make for your Christmas dinner table, or any Christmas party you’re hosting this holiday season.

With pretty Vintage Inspired DIY Christmas Crackers, life really is a party.

More Christmas Inspiration

You might also like our Christmas Diorama here.

Also check out Vintage Christmas Ornament Wreath here.

You might also enjoy our Birch Christmas Wreath here.