Upcycle Game Boxes Into Jigsaw Puzzles

Many board game boxes are beautiful, and a lot of them just get thrown away! The escape room style games which can only be played once, or boxes filled with expansion components for a favourite board game which get merged into the original box.

When I got a laser cutter I realised I could turn that beautiful artwork into a jigsaw puzzle!

You will need:

• A sturdy box with a pretty image you want to turn into a puzzle
• A craft knife & cutting mat
• A laser cutting machine you know how to use
• Some knowledge of working with vector graphics (SVG files)
• A sieve & lint free cloth

First we need to turn our box into some flat pieces of card. I found this was best done with a craft knife, first cutting down the corners, and then along the seams.

You want to end up with:

• The top - the piece you're actually intending to turn into a puzzle
• The bottom - almost the same size as the top, so great to use for a test cut of the entire puzzle
• Some side pieces - good for testing your cutting settings

Keep these all flat and clean!

There are a few ways you can do this depending upon your desired outcome.

The easiest way is to use a jigsaw SVG generator like this one which you can set up with the size of your puzzle and then download a file ready to cut. This will give you standard jigsaw puzzle piece shapes.

I prefer my puzzles to be a bit more unusual and so I take a photo, load that into Illustrator on my iPad and then design the cut myself. I like to cut around interesting elements of the design to highlight them as you solve the puzzle. When doing this it's important to ensure your pieces don't end up tiny - it's easy to zoom all the way in and lose track of physical sizes!

Using the edge pieces from the box you need to test your cut settings. On my Xtool M1, I found that 80% power at 4mm/s was great with just a single pass. If you're working with heavy card which won't get blown around by your air assist then running at a lower power for multiple passes will give cleaner cuts. However, this is going to vary depending upon the particular box you're using as well as your laser cutter. So I recommend checking every time.

First I cut out some little squares at various power and speed settings, and then checked these settings by cutting a puzzle piece. I also cut a little section of the puzzle to check I hadn't misjudged the sizes of the pieces and to test that they fit together nicely.

Be extra careful! Cardboard can catch fire when using a laser cutter! Never leave the machine unattended and be ready to interrupt the cut if you see flames!

Using the back of the box, I recommend doing a test of the full puzzle cut. With my hand designed cuts I think it's extra important to make sure none of the pieces are too small and that I've not missed a cut somewhere.

Note: I had to design my cut in 2 halves as this box is actually too big to cut in one go on my M1!

Once the pieces are cut I pop them all into a sieve over a sink and give it a good shake - there will be a lot of black soot from cutting the cardboard and this helps get rid of most of it. Once I'm no longer getting any black bits in the sink while shaking, I wipe each piece with a very slightly damp lint free cloth to finish cleaning them (if you don't mind sooty fingers you can skip the cleaning on the test puzzle!)

Then it's time to try making your puzzle and see what you think. If you find any minor changes you want to make, fix your SVG file before the next step. I found a few knobs which had ended up too small so I enlarged those a little.

Now repeat the previous step but with the top of the box and your final SVG! Be sure to double-check your framing as you only have one chance to get this right!

Complete the puzzle and marvel at the beautiful jigsaw puzzle you made out of something that was destined for recycling! 😁