 Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixtape Craft thank you for watching today so I'm going to be showing you how I've made these adorable Christmas crackers. I absolutely love how these have come together and these are going to be going into gift bags that I will be giving to my six closest school friends so I like to do this every year. This is obviously a little bit different so whether we have our little get-together that we usually do that may not happen however they will still have a bag full of all these treats so this one here I will be filling so they're only tied in a bow there so I can easily undo them but I've already put the little snap in there as well so when they pull them that will make a little kind of bang it's more of a snap sound but it's funny nonetheless and then inside there's plenty of room there I'll wrap it in some tissue and pop a little gift in there for each of them and I'm probably going to put their initial like a die cut of their initial somewhere amongst that cluster on the front there as well I've added a rosette you've got little bells which kind of jingle and then I've added some glossy accents onto bits and pieces there and I just coloured these elements using my colour pencils so really easy to make I've got mats and layers on the back there and if you watched the live where I actually put these together you'll see I've added these embellishments on the edge here I did say that I think that you know you could put something there and I was I really like how this has come together and then I've added this trim this glitter it's like a washi tape and I'm really pleased with it so let me show you how I put these together okay so the kit I've used is the kit 13 from papercraft society so this one's by Simply Made Crafts which is by Helen Griffin now if you don't have the die to make a Christmas cracker I do have a Christmas cracker playlist so if you head to there you might like the inspiration in terms of the decoration that I've done with today's but if you don't have the dies and you'd like to make a cracker then you can check out my playlist there but if you would like to get your hands on this it is still available from when I was making this video and I'll link it below it's a great size and as I mentioned during the live these aren't just for Christmas time I've given crackers as birthday presents and also they're great for baby shower favours so you can have these in obviously the blues and pinks and all those kind of things and birthday colours whatever you want to do and they're lovely for just putting gifts in and in an alternative way really it's just something a bit more fun so inside you have your dies and it's this one here so I just die cut two of them okay and you'll see here I've already got these ready that's how they look when you cut them out so we're now going to move to that stage so if you've got this kit go and cut two of those you can make a three sided cracker a four sided which is what I'm going to do today which is the square this one you can also do a five and a six sided and you can also make a wine bottle style kind of box you can cut the bottom off there's lots of things you can do with them so when you die cut both of them what I've found just to make it a bit easier to fold it all together is that one's kind of a bit more done on it so just use this one so when it's die cut it's like this if you lay it into your scoreboard and just run a score line along the top of all of these teeth so if you've got this one I'm doing it at the 1 and 5 eighths just running a score line and then again you kind of want to just shift it a bit here and then do another score line I just find it's easier to add the score lines you can just see where I've added them so it's just literally above the teeth here that have been cut and again just repeat that on this one and you can go back in and do those score lines if you want but that's how when you cut it it will give you these score lines here and also here you want to fold and burnish now when you do these ones here you're going to fold so you have a mountain then half of the teeth will go into a valley like put it on its side there we go like so and then you'll have another mountain so then when you put it together the teeth are kind of in between there and again do the same at that end so you're just going to fold them over valley and then finish with a mountain like so and then just do those ones as well okay do you want to do that twice and then we're going to stick them together so I've got my liquid glue here you can use red tape I think I did use red tape during the live but then I found it was quicker for me to use my liquid glue when I put them all together you know it took me more time deciding on the papers and how I was going to do the decoration than it did to do the actual cracker itself so once you know I decided these were really quick to do and actually put them all together in about an hour and a half after I done the live so yeah and I'm glad I've kind of done these now because it's one less thing to have to actually put together you know in December so add your glue to the tabs I always like to do the middle one first line up those score lines and then just kind of pull that one and then that one and then it should all line up perfectly just give that a minute like so now before I go to stick this side I found it easier to decorate with the embellishments and also to put this trim through here so I've just got some of my red tape here and I'm going to come from this side here where the fold is and I'm just going to run this tape through the middle now the reason I'm using the red tape and then that silver washy tape is because that washy tape is not very sticky so I'm actually you know if you've got a nice sticky washy tape and just stick it straight on top but because mine's just got a very very low tack it was just lifting I'm just going to add this just to give it something more to stick to. Okay then I'm going to take the backing off of one side and then this is the silver washy so it's exactly but slightly wider than that red tape I believe but then I can just go back over stick that one down try and keep it as straight as possible and then again okay so that's the washi tape stuck down and now I've just got some of these embellishments so again whenever I stick any embellishments down I always just like to add a little bit of liquid glue just to stick it better so these were from Hobbycraft had them for a while they're like a matte finish and I thought they they kind of gave a hardware kind of feel to it but it also then looked like some studded almost like some studded furniture or armor had that kind of look to it I don't know I really liked it so you can use any kind of embellishments and you might want to do some little dots of glue and then sprinkle glitter or you might want to you know actually get some glitter glue and follow the shape of the the end of the the cracker it's entirely up to you you can see just how that really kind of transforms it so I'm just going to finish this one here okay so that's now all ready and then I can just fold it in fold it over fold this side over and add your glue you might want to just snap before this but I find it's easy to do and it's all together and then lay that all over it will perfectly line up I'm a little bit off with them but this is going on the bottom so I'm not worried at all and it's all going to be pulled apart anyway some of my friends may save it and try and kind of pull the the gift out or they can undo the bow to be fair and probably they'd look quite nice then as a little kind of tree ornament so and then I just fold it back over that way okay and now because of the way that you folded those these teeth will go in and then they will the ribbon when we attach that will keep that all together then I've got my mats and layers so I've got these here now during live I actually covered the top one and it is this one here you can just about see under there there's the mat and layer you don't need it I didn't anyway but if you do then you'll want four of each side but for me I'm just doing the three and these ones measure for the mat layer it's one and three eighths by two and three quarters and then the pattern paper is one and one eighth by two and a half so I'm going to attach them to the bottom I mean you might not even want to do the bottom one it's entirely up to you but I'm going to do the three kind of sides and leave the top one okay so that is the three sides all covered and I've also popped my ribbon on there as well so I'm just waiting for my heat gun to warm up so whilst that's happening I've got my snap here and I didn't show how I put these in during the live you just get a little bit of tape and you want to stick it to one side okay so just popped a little bit of tape there and then I'm just going to feed this in and just stick it just inside so like I said you might if this is a bit too fiddly then you might want to you know do it before you stick it down but it doesn't help that I've got that great big ring on so I've just put my fingers in there there we go and I don't know how well you can see that but you can see it's just stuck just in there okay so a little bit hanging out here and a little bit hanging out there and that's exactly what you want okay so with my decoration I made these rosettes these are just a piece of one inch by 11 or like a full length and score every quarter of an inch and then concertina fold and you will have a rosette so I'm popping a rosette on like so and then I have my nutcracker I have a drum I have the Ponsettia I have my have a cracking Christmas sentiment and then I've got these little sprigs I've got another one somewhere I've got the orange slice which I had just kind of sat under there and then I'm going to stick a couple of bells just on the tops of the bows there as well I'm going to pop it on high speed and get that all stuck down okay so that's everything there and then I just grabbed some of my Nuvo drops now I need to die cut another one of the green you can see the green the sprig here but on the top there are just little red Nuvo drops just to look like berries that was using the one of the vintage drops and this is the postbox red but for the yellow which against the vintage drops and this is the yellow brick road I just popped a very small blob into the center of the flowers there and also if you are very patient but you could do a very small little dot on each of his buttons is there as well and I think that looks quite cute and then just for a little bit of glitter I used the Nuvo honey gold and I just done a nice big blob in the middle of his hat and it just also gives it a little bit of texture as well you can add your glitter pen and things like that and I did also put this one here so it was a bit like mistletoe very small little dots there and this is beautiful this one this is the metallic caramel cream that's one of the crystal drops again by Nuvo so they have it I think they look really nice I just bring it up closer just so you can see little dots there tiny ones you can just make them out there on his uniform the gold dot just there and then the yellow ones in the middle of the flowers like so there'll be another sprig which I will add in there but I think it looks really nice they have my six mini little Christmas crackers which I'm looking forward to finding some nice treats now to pop inside I'll probably put a scratch card in there as well so always goes down well so I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial as always all the links to everything that I've used will be shared below and I'll be back again very soon with another tutorial oh and I'll also link up here some of my other cracker videos if you didn't click on that playlist one earlier you'll be able to find some of them here as well all right take care see you soon bye