DIY holiday paper crackers (free template!)

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m one of those crazy people that picks a different “theme” every year during the holiday season – for everything from my decor, right down to our Christmas wrapping paper. Maybe it’s the designer/branding specialist in me, but I just love when there is one cohesive theme for everything. (Yeah, I know, I’m a little extra).

Sometimes it can be really hard to find certain things that match your whole theme. Last year I chatted a little bit about this when I shared my DIY gift tags. I will never go back to just using store-bought tags! This year, I thought I would take a stab at making my own holiday crackers with my Cricut Maker out of some of the wrapping paper I’m using this year so they can match everything too and I thought I would share it with you. ‘Tis the season for holiday DIYs after all!

Another great thing about making your own holiday crackers is getting to choose what you put inside of it. You can write your own jokes, put in tea, candy, lip chap, little accessories, literally anything you can think of! Overall, I think they turned out pretty good.

Materials:

The first thing you need to do is cut your wrapping paper down to 12×12″ squares so that it will fit on your cutting mat. I used the super handy high-quality paper trimmer that comes with the Cricut essential tool kit to do this.

Once you have all of your wrapping paper cut, put it on the cutting mats and launch the Cricut design space, it’s time to start a new project and upload the template!

To do this:

Select “new project”.
Select “upload image” from the menu on the left side of the screen.
Upload the image and select simple image > save as cut file.
On the next screen, select the image you just uploaded and select the green “insert images” button in the lower corner.

Once the image is imported, it’s time to get cutting! Click on the “make it” button, connect your machine and select 20 lbs paper as your material then start up your machine.

Once the design is cut, remove it from the grip-mat and fold the rhombus zone inwards. Trim the cracker snaps if needed and glue them to the paper. Set aside and let it dry and take this time to gather/make your prizes for the crackers.

I chose to fill mine with candy, confetti and holiday trinkets, tea, a joke and a tissue paper crown, Honestly, the hardest part about this DIY was making the tissue paper crown – I ripped a few and also made some too small!

Once the glue is dry, it’s time to fill and roll the crackers. I tried it two different ways: placing all of the prizes inside then rolling them; and rolling them and securing one end then inserting the prizes. I personally found the second method easier and ended up making the rest of my crackers that way.

Since our theme this year is pretty natural, with accents of gold and silver, I decided to just use some gardeners twine to tie up my crackers as opposed to using a fancier ribbon this time around. I picked up some fake berries and pine from the craft show and cut them into strips and tied them to one end of the crackers along with some silver bells to give it a fun, festive flare.

Thats it, you’re done! All that’s left to do is to put them out at your holiday get-together and crack them open.

Another thing I thought of while making these is that by making your own crackers, you also have the option to customize them! If you wanted to, you could fill them with items for specific people and make name tags for each of the crackers to add a personalized touch.

Traditionally, you usually see holiday crackers in stores around the winter holidays. Another thing I love about making your own is that you can create them for any occasion; birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, or even just to spice up a dinner party!

Have you ever made your own holiday crackers before?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. While I may have received compensation and/or product mentioned in this post, the opinions and text are all mine. This post also contains affiliate links.