Upscale your Christmas Crackers & add a bit of Luxury

Christmas Crackers Straight from the Box



Upscaled Luxury Christmas Crackers





This is a fun, Christmas project. If, like me, you want your Christmas Dinner Table to look opulently festive but don’t like the price the Luxury Christmas Crackers (which, after all, end up in the bin within hours of use), perhaps you’ll follow my project to Upscale your Christmas Crackers.

For this project you will need:

• Inexpensive Christmas Crackers (mine cost £6.80 for a dozen)
• Coordinating 25mm Double Satin Ribbon
• Gold Mirri Card
• Gold Pearlescent Paper
• White Paper
• Sheet of Double Sided Adhesive
• Glitter
• Rhinestones
• Spellbinders Create-A-Flake Die Set (or similar)
• Glue

Adhere one side of the double-sided adhesive sheet to the sheet of white paper, then cut and emboss a set of three Snowflakes (largest flake in gold mirri, medium flake in adhesive paper and smallest flake in gold pearlescent paper). Repeat sets for as many crackers as you have. 

Peel away the adhesive layer and cover the medium size flake in glitter. Layer up the three flakes, applying a small dot of wet glue between each layer.

Cut 2 x 65cm lengths of Double Satin Ribbon. Remove any existing ties from the crackers and then tie your own ribbon around the crackers and trim the ribbon ends.

Glue the snowflake topper to the centre of the cracker, top off with a rhinestone crystal and use more crystals to decorate each end of the cracker.

 If you really want to go uber-luxury, finish off the Snowflake topper with a Rhinestone Button (but as these button cost over £1 a piece, they push up the price per cracker quite a bit).

I hope you've enjoyed this fun festive Christmas, do let me know what you think and wishing all my blog readers a very Merry Christmas.





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Ruffle Ribbon Trim Tutorial





Hand-stitched Ruffle Ribbon Trim

  

This Ruffle Ribbon Trim has been hand-stitched from satin ribbon (great for sewing machine phobics like myself).  I came up with the idea for this trim whilst soaking in the bath, having spotted something similar in a pre-made ribbon trim on the web.  It’s not quite as “perfect” as the pre-made trim, but I think that adds to the charm – I hope you agree?  I’ve used double-faced satin ribbon (15mm) but it would work equally well with contrast satin, grosgrain, twill or seam binding.  The ribbon needs to be robust enough to be ironed, and as there is stitch “workings” to the back, it may not work so well with a sheer or organza ribbon.

So you will need:

• A generous length of ribbon

• Needle and thread
• An iron

NB: I've used black thread to contrast with my red ribbon so that it would show better in the photographs, normally I would use either an invisible thread or a thread to match my ribbon.



First measure a 6cm length, then pinch a loop from approx 2cm to 6cm. 

Working from inside the loop (to hide the knot), stitch the loop together with a small stitch. 

Next, by eye, make another loop.  Pass the thread along the back and up through the middle (so all the thread is kept to the back of the trim). Be careful not to stitch the second loop to the first loop. 

   

Repeat for as many loops as needed to reach your desired length.  Tie off the thread to the back. 

Your loops of ribbon should now look like this.

Next warm up an iron and have a pressing cloth to hand.  Starting with the first loop, carefully push down the loop to form a box pleat.  Holding the loop in place with your fingers, very carefully start to press the loop into a box pleat. 

Repeat along the length, pressing each loop.  You may need to go over the pressed pleats several times with the iron, but be careful to place the iron over the loop, don’t run it up and down the ribbon as you would if iron clothes, you are just pressing each pleat into place.

When you’ve finished, your trim will look like this.  Attach extra strong sticky tape to the back of the trim to stick to your project, such as my Valentine Ribbon Ruffle Card.

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