Now that we’re in November and Christmas is fast approaching, we thought that today would be the ideal time to share a DIY tutorial for making handmade Christmas crackers with you all. Yes, we’re filling our festive favours with ChattyFeet and hope that you will enjoy this step-by-step guide for creating your very own handmade ‘Chatty Crackers’ too!
Yes, those cheeky little socks that have been tagged on Instagram all year round have found their way into our Christmas celebrations and we can't think of a better gift to give to your guests around the festive dinner table. We’re having an early Christmas celebration so we thought that this would be the ideal time to create a cracker tutorial and share this idea with you all.
1. First of all, decide on a pair of ChattyFeet for each person around your dinner table, We've gone for funky matching 'Meggy' socks for father and son, pink 'Venus' socks for mother and daughter, plus some funny ‘celebrity' socks; Kate Middle-toe, Professor Brian Sox, Sigmund and Yoko Mono. We’re already giggling to ourselves just imagining all the shenanigans around the Christmas table!
2. Gather together some cracker essentials - joke, hat and toys - which you can take out of last year's leftover Christmas crackers. You could always pick up a cheap pack of crackers from a pound shop and either add the ChattyFeet into the bought crackers (be sure to take out the snap though!) or dismantle them and use the fillings in your own crackers.
3. To make the crackers, use two cardboard toilet roll middles - one for the centre, and one cut in half for the ends of the crackers. If you don't have that many empty loo rolls lying around, you can use cardboard to wrap around one loo-roll template and tape it together to create your own cardboard centres.
4. Fill your centre tube with a pair of ChattyFeet socks, a hat, joke (maybe write your own), stickers for the little ones and chocolate coins. Again, no snap is needed - this might singe the socks and we definitely don't want that, do we?!
5. Position the tubes on the reverse-side of a rectangle of festive wrapping paper with the two smaller pieces at the ends and leaving a gap between these and the centre tube. Use double-sided tape or a glue-stick to attach the paper around the tubes and roll up. Tape the end of the paper down.
6. To make the cracker shape, squeeze the paper in the gaps between the tubes and gently twist the paper before tying up with ribbon bows. We've used a different colour ribbon for each guest or you could even add a name tag to ensure that each recipient receives the right pair of socks!
The crackers look great on our festive table and they were so much fun when we pulled them open during our early Christmas dinner. Everyone was very surprised to find a pair of ChattyFeet rolled up inside their crackers and immediately slipped them onto their hands to use as puppets at the dinner table. It was great fun hearing our guests reading out their cracker joke in their best Professor Brian Sox voices!
Everyone appreciated the homemade nature of the Christmas crackers and we all enjoyed getting an unexpected Christmas gift at the table - it made the meal even more special and definitely added to the fun festive atmosphere, especially when some guests attempted to eat their entire meal whilst wearing the socks... on their hands! Let us know if you have a go at making your own Chatty Crackers and we'd love to see photos of your own festive DIYs so please tweet us a photo!
