Christmas Cracker swap

I have been taking part in Tracy's from Mad About Bags Christmas Cracker swap for the past three years and it is a lovely one to do as you are limited to what can be fitted inside a kitchen roll, which gives you a real challenge.  This year, I was paired up with the lovely Alison from  fatdormouse and View from the Teapot.  We emailed and I discovered that she didn't sew, so she asked whether I could wrap the cracker in paper, for paper crafting, rather than material. Of course I could!  We found out about likes and dislikes and then got on with the making and buying.  We swapped our crackers and here's what I received:

 A cracker with an added extra of the most beautiful rich purple coloured felting wool...

 ...and when I opened it up...well!  What a lot of goodies!  Alison had even drawn a zentangle picture featuring a cat, which was also ingeniously wrapped around the cracker.

 Lovely buttons, a necklace, a key ring, two corn dolly decorations (which will be going on the tree), chocolate coins...

lollipops, ribbons, mints, toiletries - how lucky I was!  A HUGE thank you to Alison for her generosity

Here's what I sent (although, rather foolishly, I forgot to take a photo of the wrapped cracker): hot chocolate, Lindt bears, a felt heart, star decoration, quartz earrings, ribbons and cosmos seeds.

I found this rather gorgeous hand made paper so wrapped that around the kitchen roll before wrapping in paper and adding ribbon.  It was a lovely swap, so thank you to Tracy for organising and many thanks to Alison.