Crafting crackers

A few things are an absolute must for Christmas day in our house. Trifle for dessert and crackers to pull around the table. 

Usually, I end up leaving the crackers until the last moment and end up rushing around looking for some. However, they always disappoint me a little with the contents as most the plastic trinkets get left behind by their winners and end up being thrown away. The solution was to drag out my Cricut machine and look up a template for my own. No plastic will be used for the 'prize' inside saving the need to throw out things that can cause damage to wildlife or clog up landfills.

I used Hobbycraft glitter ombre care in silver and gold. I have snaps for the 'bang' inner from eBay.

Lucky 13 was the number I cut out this evening.

The hardest part was having the patience peeling off the diamonds left on the mat when everything else got peeled off.

Number 13 was used to see how easily they will go together and they have worked well.  Will use some bold dark ribbon I think.  My idea is to fill with the usual tissue paper hats, a handwritten joke and a little personal gift.  So each cracker will be labelled with the recipient's name. Not sure how I want to do that yet but I am already so excited to put these together and use them.

Here's a simple side view. at around 11 inches long I am happy with the size it has come out at. 

Always my favourite way of ending my crafting session, admiring the craft confetti.  Be it card, paper, glitter, fabric or yarn I always enjoy playing with the scraps and thinking of a use for them.  My urge for this pile is to see if the pieces will glue into star formations.  Only one way to tell.

glitter dog and tote bag

While surfing the internet for SVG cutting files the other night I came across this beauty from Wispy Willow designs. It is apparently a dachshund dog.  Which I have no problem with whatsoever. It does, however, strike an amazing resemblance to my DIL dog who is not a dachshund. 

I cut this out on the Cricut and thanked my lucky stars I hadn't decided to go old school with a scalpel and do it by hand like when I used to do papercuts. It took a fair while to cut and as I did I patiently did something else while checking once or twice all was well with the cut.  Then came the fun part the weeding.  Dreading this part as was convinced weeding, or removing the unneeded pieces, was going to take me all day.  It didn't however. Listening to a Terry Pratchett audiobook and a break to chat with my son I had it finished in around 80 minutes.  What I thought was going to be a stressful undertaking turned out to be very calming.  It came out just fine and despite being glitter iron-on by Cricut it behaved remarkably well.

The pile of leftover and weeded pieces give a better idea of how it sparkles.  my DIL got me into glittery things a while back so this particular make had to be glittery and sparkle.

Once pressed onto a tote bag I knew I would be making at least one more at some point soon as love how this came out. 

I really thought this Zentangle style or mandala style of file would be a pain the neck to weed and use but I'm already looking at what else I could do in a similar style soon.