Make Festive Crackers For Mind’s Christmas Crafternoon

By Sarah Proctor

If you’re planning activities for your Christmas Crafternoon, these gorgeous hand-made crackers are suitable for crafters of all abilities. They’re guaranteed to add a bit of seasonal sparkle to your event too!

You could even add in your own personalised messages and jokes to make your crackers extra special.

Crafternoon is a twice-yearly fundraiser for MIND, the mental health charity. Crafting is great for getting people together and helping everyone feel good!

Time needed: 1 hour to make 3-4 crackers
Difficulty rating: 2/5

Crafty shopping list:

Materials for making Christmas crackers: paper, scissors, pencil, ruler, ribbon, cracker snaps and small items to fill

Wrapping paper
Ribbons
Prizes
Glue
Cracker snaps
Three small cardboard tubes per cracker (empty toilet rolls work well, or you can cut down a finished tube of wrapping paper to make three tubes each 10cm long)

To make:

Cut a piece of wrapping paper to the length of three cardboard rolls, and wide enough to wrap around once. Glue a cracker snap down the centre of the paper lengthwise.

Rolling paper around tube and cracker snap

Place three cardboard rolls on the paper, end to end, and put a line of glue on top of the middle roll only. Then roll the paper around the three rolls. Seal the paper in place.

Holding paper tube and inserting wrapped sweet. Enamel badge and handwritten motto on the side.

It’s time to fill your cracker! Fill the middle roll with whatever you like: sweets, paper hats, and maybe a positive personalised message.

Pulling one cardboard tube out of paper tube and twisting paper in gap between that and the middle tube still in place

Now seal your cracker. First, move one of the end rolls so it sticks out of the wrapping paper by about 2cm.

Tying ribbon around paper tube, either side of central cardboard tube, to make a recognisable cracker.

Next, twist the tube sticking out and the middle tube away from one another, so that the paper between the two tubes twists and collapses in on itself. Tie a ribbon around the twist, and remove the end tube. Do the same on the other side, and tie with another ribbon.

You’ve made your first cracker! Admire your work, take a photo, and share it using #crafternoon on Facebook or Instagram.

One in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem in any given year. Crafternoon is a fantastic way to raise funds in support of those of us affected. Take part on November 30 and help raise money so that Mind can provide information and advice to people in their time of need.

For further information, email crafternoon@mind.org.uk or head to mind.org.uk/crafternoonregister