Summer Christmas Card

Christmas is awesome in New Zealand. Long, hot summer days, "Carols by Candlelight" in broad daylight, and above all, the chance to humblebrag [1] to your friends in the northern hemisphere who are in the cold, dark and wet.

My favourite way to rub their noses in it is to send a Christmas card showing a beach scene, but those are becoming hard to find and so we must make our own.

[1] "It's just too hot. Even hanging the champagne over the side of the boat is barely enough to keep it cool."

Laser-cutter or access to a makerspace

Wood

Wood glue

Stickers OR Paper and glue/tape

Printer (or more artistic talent than the author)

In the absence of any available public designs, I drew a kiwi, a beach ball, a signpost and a Christmas tree.

They were all drawn in LibreOffice Draw, mainly using overlaid and merged geometric shapes, with the odd freehand line on the beach ball and to mark the shoreline.

I can't draw, OK?

The "Cut" lines are in black and the "Etch" lines are in red.

The kiwi was drawn first as it is the most important image, and it was made as large as possible while fitting within the confines of the mounting holes.

Next the signpost was added, again being as large as would fit. the Christmas tree and beach ball were essential to get the concepts of "Christmas" and "Nah, nah, nah. I'm on the beach" and were fitted around.

To make the relative sizings look OK, the kiwi was shrunk a little bit.

After each piece was designed, the tabs to allow it to stand upright were merged onto the basic shape. The plywood used here is 3mm thick and there will be two layers in the finished thing, so the tabs were made 5mm thick to give an almost full-depth insertion, while never coming close to making unstable nubs on the underside.

Each of the two-tab pieces (kiwi, sign and tree) has the tabs at a different spacing. This was deliberate. If you want to give your recipients the opportunity to get creative, then you may choose identical spacing.

The slots in which the tabs are inserted were placed. Note that in order to fit the tree in, one of the slots supporting the kiwi is only a single-layer support.

Once the slots were positioned around the layer containing the pieces, they need to be precisely duplicated in the upper layer. It is vital that this is not done by copying and pasting, but rather by copying, pasting and reflecting. This will be justified in the next step.

The laser-cut wood had some staining from condensed smoke during the cutting process. The pieces were washed under running water and then racked up to dry. Fun fact:- the studs on Lego bricks were exactly the right spacing to support the pieces to stand upright! Cool!

As well as the two layers for the cards, the cutting file contains some alignment pieces which are designed to help the layers fit perfectly.

The two layers had a very small amount of white wood glue put on them, and then they were offered up and aligned by inserting the alignment wedges into some of the tab holes.

With the two layers aligned properly, some spring clamps were used to squash the layers together.

Once the layers are clamped, the alignment pieces MUST be removed, just in case there is any squeeze-out of the glue which might cause the alignment pieces to be bonded.

Then the clamped stack is left for the glue to cure.

The final photograph shows why the layers should be reflected before cutting:- if the plywood used has a latent curve to it (which they all do) then reflecting one layer will mean that the curves pull apart from each other, allowing the glued layers to compensate against each other. If they were cut in the came orientation, then the completed piece would have an overall curve, preventing it sitting flat.

The laser-cut pieces fit into their holes very snugly, so any squeeze-out of the glue will cause problems. See the way that the Christmas tree is not sitting flush in the first photograph.

Careful inspection shows a little bubble of glue, which has to be carved out with a sharp-pointed knife, but once that's been done everything is fine.

Always do a test-fit of the pieces into their display positions, and clear the mounting slots if needed.

To add festive greetings to the card, print out the "Christmas Card Stickers" file. I got that printed at a copy-shop onto a sheet of self-adhesive stickers and then trimmed the "Merry Christmas" ones to fit the signpost.

The "To/From" stickers were placed onto the top side of the card and then written on.

If you lack self-adhesive paper, then the things can printed onto plain paper, then trimmed and attached with double-sided tape or glue.

If you are blessed with artistic talent then you can of course write or draw the greetings as the spirit moves you.

Finally, the cards are packed for transport. Into each one I put a photograph of an assembled card and a little note suggesting that the recipient (or their children) might like to spend a quiet moment on Christmas Day colouring the card in. Since they won't be on the beach.