Less is More...But More is Moooore!

If you follow my flickr, I'll warn you now that you won't be reading anything new...unless I decide to sneak something in just to catch you out :p

The joys of making crackers descended today, although I've cheated a little bit this year and bought these amazing cracker "blanks" - they're musical! Woo! Because crackers should have the ability to be Incredibly Annoying I think. I've made little gifts to go inside them for my parents - an owly lavender sachet and lego cufflinks. The little notebook I knitted a cover for is too big to go inside the cracker, so I've just stuck a note in his telling him the Easter Bunny has hidden it and the first of a series of clues so he can find it again :) I don't care if he's now 16 - you're never too old for a treasure hunt, okay?

So on to the crackers. I had big ambitions this year to make them look...classy. It was an ambitious ambition for me to be honest, so have a look at how I got on...

First up is the cracker blanks - bought from the pound shop for their promise of Christmassy music!

Full of good intentions, I edged them with lace. This has been in my trims tin for a Long Time. I don't remember if I bought it new or if it's a vintage buy. Either way, it's time for it to be used up.

Then I chose some Hot Off the Press papers that I've had for at least a decade. Each paper is different, but in the same tone of red and I feel they add a touch of timeless classic (and classy) appeal. At this point I'm imagining I'm going to have the most elegant Christmas table. Ever.

I also have some gorgeous vellum paper in my stash - with gold stars on. A perfect match for the deep reds. Then the child in me started to pipe up that vellum paper would look fancier with pinking sheared edges....and each cracker needed four strips of it. The grown up part of me raised a rather worried eyebrow at this stage.

Inner child started to get more excited and stuck strips of starry peel off borders on each end of the crackers...mmmmm, shiny. You know what would go well with that? More borders for the central part of the crackers...and why stop at two when you can slap four on there!

The tops of the crackers then needed a final flourish - a star to go with the vellum! But one star was a little flat...four piled on top of each other was better...a stack of eight was mildy ridiculous but inner child was beaming at them. So eight it was. But they weren't as shiny as the peel offs which meant heaps of gold embossing powder just *had* to be melted onto them...and then some more just in case.

oooh...but I'd bought mini baubles for craft projects and red gems too. They needed to go on too! Inner child was insistent and I'm afraid...I obliged.

So there you have my Christmas Crackers all ready for Christmas Day lunch. I can almost imagine my mother looking wistfully at the dusting that will probably still need to be done as she calculates just how long it took me to produce such eye watering (and deafening) crackers....

PS. Advent candles need to warn you when they carry on burning past the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th of December.....