When I was at Liberty London a few weeks ago I saw these crackers and fell instantly in love. Although I can spend my money on crazy stuff, I thought £45 for a box full of pretty crackers with unpersonalised gifts was a bit too crazy for me.

So I decided in the whole "waste not want not" theme, that I’d make my own using wallpaper leftovers.

Here’s how to make your own, it’s really simple and actually quite quick to make.

1. Buy cheap DIY crackers 2 & 3. use white glue and roll out evenly with a felt paint roller, use a piece of plastic that doesn’t hurt to get dirty 4. stick the wallpaper on top, cut around using scissors and cut out the rest using a Stanley knife. Be careful of not cutting the fireworks. Don’t forget to deep cut all the inserts.

5. This is what the cracker looks like after cutting 6. and this when you turn it around.

Now insert to make it round. Only tie the top of cracker so that you can add a paper crown and a gift. Then tie the bottom bit of the cracker and you are done.

I stuck a name tag on the back of each cracker as I didn’t want to ruin the pattern of the wallpaper. Now I know which one is which as I placed a personalized gift in each cracker. Let me tell you that it’s quite hard finding a gift so small that fits a cracker , I did it in the end.

Behind all the bits of wallpaper is a story. I bought the top one at a local shop selling vintage wallpaper. The second one is the first wallpaper I used for the downstairs loo. The third is a leftover piece from a friend’s hall I wallpapered for her years ago. The fourth is from the same local shop. The fifth is the wallpaper I have in my kitchen and the sixth is a roll I bought in a sale as I thought it was so pretty.

I’m pleased and ready for Anki and her family on the 25th.

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I also know that I’m way behind on all my posts as I have another tutorial, a kitchen to show you and two fabulous giveaways. The reason for my absence is that I’m working on something new I will tell you about after Christmas but also because I stumbled upon a really mean and awful website (which I’m not going to credit as they don’t deserve readers) discussing my blog and being really mean about it. This puts me down and it takes a few days, a few "Yvonne ignore them’s" from my dear husband and some deep breathing. It’s for all of you who do like this blog who are not mean and who have grown up to be heartfelt and loving people that I’m still here.

I LOVE YOU XOX

I had all sorts of wild plans to handwrite and stamp this years christmas cards but I failed miserably so I had to come up with something different. That’s when I thought about my Gocco screen printer and checked to see if there were baubles left – only two, just enough!

I forgot how much fun it is to use a Gocco as it has been ages since I’ve last used it.

It’s so simple and I can recommend to read in to owning a Gocco as it will make life so much more fun owning one. As from now on I’ll start to use mine over and over again.

I went for my two favourite dress colours, navy and pink, and used white paint for the print on the card.

How funny that I’ve yet made a double Dutch error as the card is in English only the en between Boris and Yvonne should be an and and not a Dutch en. Ah well it’s printed now and I love it!