Laser cut a paper
Christmas card

Step by step guide

Surprise your family and friends with a personalised, laser cut Christmas card this year! This is simple to produce, and all you'll need is paper in two different colours and glue.

Preparation

Required material

Paper (approx.. 200g fir-tree green)
Paper (approx. 200g white)
Paper glue

Trotec laser used

Speedy 300
60 watts
1.5 inch lens

Step by Step

Step 1: Engraving and cutting paper

First of all download the template file and open it in CorelDraw.

Our Christmas card is made from two different materials. We'll start by engraving and cutting the green paper, then the white paper. You're free to customise it as much or as little as you like at this stage, adding personal greetings, inscriptions or signatures as you require.

These are the parameters we used on our laser machine for this job:

Grid engraving: Power 15 %, speed 70 % resolution 500 ppi
Vector cut – scoring: Power10 %, speed 8 % resolution 1000 Hz
Vector cut – cutting through: Power 15 %, speed 2 % resolution 1000 Hz

Step 2: Folding

Once both sets of paper have been cut to the appropriate size, first fold the green paper along its centre folding line so that the engraving is on the inside. When you've done that, open it again and fold it along the other folding line (which is marked red in the template file). This will create a 3D object.

Step 3: Applying the glue

Now apply the glue conservatively to the back side of the green paper and attach it to the white paper. Leave the card folded open until the glue has dried completely.