One of our favourite holiday traditions is making DIY Christmas crackers, and I’m so pleased with how this year’s efforts have turned out! 

We created these beautiful marbled crackers using strips of marble art made by the girls.

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Handmade crackers are way more fun than store bought ones don’t you think? The making of them is almost as fun as cracking them open with a bang over the Christmas table.

You can decorate DIY Christmas crackers any way you like, and the more ideas you try the more ideas you come up with.

I especially love decorating ours with the kids’ process art to give them a unique touch. In the past we’ve shared crackers decorated with tie-dyed paper towel as well as splatter painted paper, and this year we’ve gone for some gorgeous marble art paper.

Here is how we made them.

How to make Marbled DIY Christmas Crackers:

Step 1: Make the marble art

Marble painting is lots of fun! The easiest way to do it with kids is to buy a kit with everything you need included. I can’t find the exact one we had in our cupboard, but it’s similar to this one here. 

You can get more premium versions. If you’re serious about marble painting, you might want a better quality set. We just wanted something quick and easy to set up that the girls could have fun using so we bought the kids’ version. 

Select colours for marbling that suit the colour of the paper you plan on wrapping the crackers in. We chose green, blue and purple for ours.

Marble painting works by thickening the water with the solution provided in the kit. Usually it’s a powder that you stir in.

When the marble paints are dripped onto the surface they float on the thickened water, and you swirl them around to make patterns before laying a sheet of paper gently over the top to make a print.

This activity is great for all ages – very soothing and relaxing. I love marble printing and so do my girls.

There are certain traditional patterns you can make with marbling, but the girls just swirled it around and made abstract marble patterns. We love how they turned out!

Step 2: Make the crackers

You will need:

• Tissue paper
• Cracker snaps
• Ribbon
• Printable jokes or Christmas “Would You Rather” questions – (we’ve used the same jokes too many times, so this year we went for Would you Rather questions instead)
• A small novelty (we’ve used instant scratchies but a toy or trinket would do)
• A chocolate or mini candy cane
• Recycled paper roll (we’ve used paper towel rolls cut in half)
• Stapler
• Double sided tape

How to:

1. Make the silly paper hats by cutting a folded sheet of tissue paper into zig zag strips – this way you make lots of paper crowns at once. Stick a piece of double sided tape onto one end leaving the paper side on so that it can be adjusted to suit head size. Fold up small to stuff inside cracker.
2. Stuff the paper crown, novelty, cracker snap, joke and chocolate inside the paper roll.
3. Roll the paper roll up in a sheet of tissue wrap.
4. Twist the ends and staple the twists to keep the cracker snap in place.
5. Wrap a strip of marble paper around the centre to decorate and secure with double sided tape.
6. Tie a ribbon over each twist.

Aren’t they pretty?

These marble art DIY Christmas crackers will make lovely table decorations for our family Christmas celebration – they’re almost too good to crack open!

More fun Holiday crafts for kids:

• Turn ordinary home-made cookies into fortune cookies for Christmas and New year parties
• Use our free printable Christmas shapes to make adorable kid-made decorations – they make lovely keepsakes
• Create the entire nativity scene from paper with this printable template
• Check out our printable paper craft collection – 12 gorgeous paper crafts to decorate your tree and home for Christmas
• Kids will love this printable noise and action dice game – place it on the kids table and they can colour and decorate their own dice game before playing it together
• This Santa and Reindeer basket set is fun to make and fill with treats