We have just received a large delivery of cracker hats and cracker snaps which will see us through Christmas 2010. A lot of you who like to make your own crackers were disappointed last year when we had to stop selling hats and snaps because we didn’t have enough for our fill your own Christmas crackers. This year we have doubled our usual stock to keep up with the demand of all you Christmas craft makers who want to make your own crackers again this year.

More cracker gifts have arrived this week too and include the following:

These stylish pens will make a great cracker gift for men. It’s so hard to find suitable gifts for men and especially ones that can fit inside a Christmas cracker! And these will fit in a jumbo cracker only.

We haven’t forgotten the ladies either. These are mini pens that double up as a key ring and include a matching charm and fit easily into a handbag.

These mini torches are excellent quality. Triple beam and very powerful. I’ve had to test them out already. Our industrial unit where we work out of is windowless and we had a power cut for an hour the other day. It went pitch black and thankfully I managed to stumble my way to these torches. The unit is not that big and I would have found my way out but I just wanted to see how good these mini torches are and I’m happy to report they really do throw out some light for something so small

Here is a great little gadget. A mini radio with mini headphones. You won’t find ones of these in your high street box of crackers either! But we at Classic Crackers want to provide luxury Christmas crackers with great quality gifts, not junk that goes straight in the bin.

Another great luxury cracker gift is our sleek mini clock. It has an aluminium finish and is only 3 inches in length and would make a great little travel clock.

We do have over 50 cracker gifts for you to choose to fill your own crackers ranging from 20p to just under £8.00. You should be able to find something for everyone whatever your budget.

To see our full range of cracker gifts click on the following link:

http://www.classic-crackers.co.uk/shop/gifts/cat_8.html

Christmas 2010 papers are starting to arrive and we’re creating this year’s Christmas crackers and adding them to the Classic Crackers shop as quickly as we can. One of our most popular fill your own Christmas crackers last year was a white cracker with a glitter silver snowflake pattern. For Christmas 2010 it is going to be available in black as you can see from the picture here.

As with all our fill your own Christmas crackers, one end is left open for you to drop in gifts. Your can buy cracker gifts from our online Christmas cracker shop or we can leave your crackers empty and you can source your own cracker fillers and insert them yourself.

It’s very simple to do. We do all the hard work really! We make the cracker as you see in the picture but one end is left untied. We have scrunched it already and all you have to do is gently pull the end out so it opens up enough for your to drop your cracker gifts inside. Then push it shut and tie it up with some ribbon which we provide with all our empty cracker orders.

It really is that simple and takes just a few minutes to do. Don’t worry about the bows either as they are stuck on and you can still add gifts and tie the crackers up even if there is a bow on the cracker!

To order the black snowflake Christmas cracker click on this link:
http://www.classic-crackers.co.uk/shop/Christmas-Crackers/Fill-Your-Own/Black-Snowflake/prod_347.html

Although we are in the middle of the summer we at Classic Crackers start preparing for Christmas! All this years stock is starting to trickle in from our suppliers. We have some new luxury papers to add to our range of luxury Christmas crackers.

Our new line of eco friendly wooden gifts has just arrived too. Just click on the link here: wooden gifts. As usual you can buy the wood gifts separately, you don’t have to buy crackers although we would love it if you did! The wooden gifts would make a great edition to our eco crackers.

Last Christmas our black and white damask crackers were very popular. This cracker is available again in 2010 but we added a red and gold version too. They are available as fill your own in any quantity you like and they will also be available in luxury Christmas cracker box sets filled with luxury gifts.

For those of you who prefer to make your own Christmas crackers our cracker snaps are back in stock as are the tissue cracker hats.

Next week will see the arrival of our luxury gifts for our fill your crackers. We’ll add an update here once the new gift stock has arrived.

With the World Cup 2010 upon us we couldn’t resist designing some football crackers. To be fair the idea was presented to us by one of our customers who asked us if we could create an England cracker for her husband’s 40th birthday party and she wanted an England football cracker created. And this is what we have created! The example below is a box of six empty crackers with one end left open allowing you to add your own fillers or choosing from the gifts via our online shop.

We’ve made them using our white pearlised cracker paper and decorated them with red satin ribbon to try and create the St. George flag. We’re pleased with the results!

This week we’ve been busy building up our wedding collection with new wedding ribbon. We have some satin ribbons in white, ivory and lilac with various wedding texts printed on them.

We’re currently waiting for supplies of similar wedding ribbons made using sheer organza material and will post here once they arrive.

We’ve also added milestone wedding ribbons -

• Silver Wedding
• Ruby Wedding
• Golden Wedding

All of our ribbons can be bought be the metre. If you require larger quantities please let us know and we can offer substantial discounts.

To see all of our wedding ribbons please visit our ribbon page here: wedding ribbon

Eco Crackers

Back by popular demand our our eco crackers. We have made these crackers from 2 different types of eco friendly paper. The first is a paper that is produced from bark grown on the daphne bush. When the park is stripped off the bush it grows back naturally meaning there is no need to cut the bushes down and regrow them as is the case with traditional methods of making paper.

The next paper includes flower seeds. Once you’ve pulled you eco Christmas crackers instead of recycling the paper bury it in your garden. Next spring you will find flowers appearing from the area where you buried your paper. Now that has to be the most environmentally friendly cracker that’s produced today!

We’ve been adding some wedding favour bags today in time for the wedding season. These are very popular for presenting your wedding favours or present small gifts in your crackers.

They are made from sheer organza and available in a few different sizes. We have popular plain colours like gold, silver, white and ivory as well as Christmas themed bags. To see all the range please visit the wedding favour bags page.

We’re finally getting used to this social networking lark and are in the process of creating a Facebook page and Twitter account. It’s all a little confusing for me at the moment but I’m sure I’ll get there in the end. For  those of you who regularly use either Facebook or Twitter it will be more convenient for you to keep up to date with our news via those mediums rather than checking the blog every now and then!

It appears we can import our blog here into Facebook which is just perfect. Saves me writing everything twice!

Click on the buttons below to follow us.

We’re busy adding a craft supplies category.

Over the years we’ve built up quite a large stock of papers, ribbons and deocrations which we’ve been told are perfect for craft making! At the moment I’m photographing and adding items as and when I can. It’s a labourious job but someone has to do it!

The craft papers are currently offcuts which are approximately A5 in size. We plan to add A4 as well. This is all new to us and we’d like some feedback. If there’s anything you can suggest to improve the craft section please let us know. We may well sell full sheets of giftwrap if it something our customers would be interested in. You could then have your Christmas crackers matching your gift wrapped presents!

We have a huge range of ribbons too and we’re adding them to our crafts section too. Currently we’re selling them in 1 metre lengths and may consider selling them on complete rolls if there is demand for this. Our ribbons are suitable for wedding and Christmas crafts. We have some birthday ribbons to add as well. The majority of ribbons are around 15mm wide in satin. We do have wider luxury ribbons too. In June we have a completely new range of ribbons coming in and we’ll get them on the site ASAP.

We’re adding the decorations which we use on our crackers and these are good to use as card toppers. Again they are available for wedding crafts and Christmas craft making projects. They are generally made from mulberry paper with great attention to detail. Here’s our kilt decoration:

We have also added some craft tools, name our glue gun and double sided tapes for use with the glue gun. This glue gun is for the more serious crafter who tends to be cards on a larger scale. If you are just makign cards now and again the glue gun might be a little more than you need right and you are probably better off sticking with what you are currently using.

However if you are making a lot of cards or general crafts our glue gun is an excellent tool to help you speed up your work. It’s very easy to use.

We’ve just returned from our annual jaunt to the Spring Fair which is held at the N.E.C in Birmingham every February. It’s the biggest trade show in Europe and buyers and sellers from all over the world are present. It’s our only real chance to meet up with our suppliers and having them all in the one venue is ideal. Due to the size of the fair we have to spend 3 days away from the office and there’s quiet a lot to do when we get back!

It was strange walking around the Christmas hall viewing the products that will be on the shelves next Christmas in February. Especially after the last Christmas was only 7 weeks ago! But in this business you get used to it. Because the majority of suppliers are having their products manufactured in China orders need to be in by the end of April. We then start to get our deliveries in around July.

This year we have sourced an eco friendly paper which will allow us to create an eco cracker which is going to be filled with a wooden gift. We’re very excited about these and we’re confident they’ll be a succes this Christmas. Our paper suppliers have a lot of great new designs and we’ll be creating a lot of new wonderful Christmas crackers this year. We also have a lot of  new gifts for filling your crackers coming in at the begining of August.

In the coming weeks we’ll be able to offer personalized printed crackers. We have a new machine which will enable us to print your name or message directly on to the crackers using gold or silver embossing foils. This will be ideal for personalizing birthday crackers and wedding crackers.

As soon as we have the printing machine up and running we’ll get the details posted up ASAP.