Christmas crafting | Third Sunday of Advent

Christmas crafting with Boråstapeter

Boråstapeter have partnered with Malin Mörner (@poppyloveyou) to create a series of wonderful Christmas decorations that you can make using wallpaper. For the third Sunday of Advent, Malin has made some lovely Christmas crackers that you can use to decorate the table. The Christmas crackers are filled with little surprises loved by guests both big and small.

Christmas crackers

To make this decoration you will need: Empty toilet roll tubes (2 per cracker), wallpaper, string, scissors, ruler, sticky tape and treats to go inside the cracker (sweets, bells, brainteasers, a crown, etc.)

Do the following (instructions for 4 crackers):

Take 8 cardboard toilet roll tubes, all cut to 8 cm in length. Cut 4 of these rolls length-wise.
Measure out sheets of wallpaper of 18 cm x 16 cm. Along the edge that is 18 cm, measure out sections of 7 cm, 3 cm and 8 cm (see image). Cut points along the 7 cm section, each about 1-1.5 cm wide. Fold the paper at the 7 cm mark and cut small triangles along the fold, to create small squares in the paper. Unfold the paper and place a toilet roll tube along the section that has not been cut. Roll the sheet around it and fix it in place with either double-sided or regular sticky tape. Repeat this step with the toilet rolls that have been cut lengthwise, but make these slightly smaller so that they can easily be slotted inside the other roll. Test that they fit inside properly. Tie up each end with a nice ribbon or piece of jute string.
Make presents to put inside the crackers. We have used nice Christmas sweets, little bells, and short rhymes that we have written down on rolled-up pieces of wallpaper (you can read out the rhyme at the Christmas table for the other guests to guess). Finally, make small (or big) paper crowns that everyone around the table can wear for Christmas dinner. We cut strips measuring 65 cm by 4 cm, and then cut points to turn them into crowns. These can then be rolled up and fixed in place using tape or a stapler at the Christmas table, as everyone’s heads are a different size. Finish by filling both parts of the Christmas cracker with the little treats, and even some sort of paper streamers, confetti or similar. It’s wonderful to have crackers that are full of surprises.
Decorate the Christmas table with the Christmas crackers. Once everyone has taken their seats, pull open the crackers and pull out the treats loved by guests both big and small.