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.

Tic Tac Toe, Noughts and Crosses and buttons DIY

One of the things I always remember as a child was my Nans then my Mums button tin.  Such a source of amazement and wonder sorting through and playing with the buttons. Plus they came in handy for when you needed buttons of course. Over the past years I have slowly built up my own tin and it still feels like a wonder going through and discovering the right button for what you need or imagining what they belong on.

Today though, I was on the search for buttons for a game of noughts and crosses as we tend to call Tic Tac Toe here in England.


The idea came about knowing I had a few of these little cotton drawstring bags left over from another project a while ago. Having seen little games in similar bags I set out to make a set of my own for something the granddaughters could possibly play with on a rainy day or when bored.

Went for a rummage through my bag of vinyl and heat transfer vinyl scraps and found a perfect size of silver holographic HTV. It was fairly quick and easy to make up the grid in Cricut design space by manipulating squares into long lines and welding them together when in the right layout.

Pressed the HTV onto the drawstring bag and filled with7 buttons each of 2 colour flower buttons. I know you don't need 7 for a game but a few are probably at some point going to get lost.  If they all do then the girls will just have to discover the delights of a button tin themselves and come and find some new ones.

All in all a quick and easy satisfying project. All things were on hand just laying around my craft area somewhere. I'm really embracing this use what you have challenge I have myself doing.  It's making me look at things a little differently and thinking up new ways to use older supplies.

Thinking about it if you didn't have or can't use HTV you could used fabric paint or markers to make up the grid, It really is quite adaptable. All sorts of things could be used for the counters to.  Obviously needing to be age appropriate due to choking hazard etc.

Bubbles, yarn and vinyl

The plan of working from my list of eight things is falling by the wayside a little. However, I am still using what I have and am being productive. 

Last night I started watching things on Netflix and decided to look through my yarn as fancied crocheting something. Came across this lovely dark pink cotton. Yet again another one of my shower poufs/loofah/scrubby things has fallen to bits leaving me with a long length of net so I decided to crochet up a cotton one that won’t unravel and won’t end up clogging up a landfill or being harmful to wildlife 

It’s coming along well. I’m a slow crocheter so I will carry on and finish this one tonight hopefully and if there’s enough yarn I will make another one up for someone else maybe. 

My younger son has a few jokey periodic table t shirts. So when I saw something similar to this on a mug I decided a shirt must be made and he was up for it. So this evening I designed this in Cricut design space and cut out the HTV vinyl, with my Cricut, ready to press onto the shirt tomorrow. I hope Freddie Mercury would approve ;-) 

Spent some time in the garden with kids and bubbles earlier on. Loving the colours in the garden and the enthusiasm everyone has for bubbles whatever age they are. 

Really has been a fairly busy fun day. Looking forward to seeing what fun tomorrow holds being the half term but might need a rest on Saturday.