Laser Cut Geometric Greeting Card

This workshop is inspired by How About Orange's DIY Papercut Greeting Card.

Download the Template

The template is located at the bottom of the page. Right-Click on the down arrow and save the template to the Desktop.

About the Template

The template contains two layers. The lower layer contains elements like card boundary which we have locked so we can spend more time on design. At your leisure, feel free to unlock the layer and explore the parts of the template. Layer>Layers to view and unlock.

Add a Character

A character is a letter, number or shape. Go to the text tool, click in the red box, and add one character. We will use this one character to create a pattern.

Select a Font

With your character selected, go to Text>Text and Font to choose your font face. We generally recommend Rockwell, Impact, and Showcard Gothic because they are medium to heavy weight -- choose what you like, but be aware that script and light/thin fonts may not be very sturdy designs unless heavily layered.

Object to Path

With your character selected, go to Path>Object to Path. We do this we can start combining shapes.

Pattern by Copy and Paste

With your character selected, begin copying and pasting to create copies. You can do this with keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) or by going to Edit>Copy and Edit>Paste.

Arrange your Shapes

Make sure the Selection Tool is activated. As you go to select characters, a hand will appear. When the hand appears, you can click and hold the mouse button to move the shape. 

If you hover over a corner handle when it's green, you can click and drag to increase or decrease the size of the character.

If you click once when the hand appears, curved handles appear which allow you to rotate the character.

Shapes MUST overlap each other and the red box.

Union Pattern Shapes

Once you have created a pattern, select all of the characters by holding down Shift and clicking on each one. Go to Path>Union. Each shape's boundary box should have disappeared into one large boundary box.

If this has not happened, go to Object>Ungroup, and then try the Union again. 

We apply Union because the next step is Difference, and Difference only works on two shapes at a time.

Difference

Select the pattern and the red frame and go to Path>Difference. If you have any trouble, let us know!

Save

Go to File>Save As, and save as an SVG.

Cut

Vector Cuts: 100% Speed, 40% Power

Scoring Lines: 100% Speed, 1% Power

Survey

Surveys are here: https://sites.google.com/site/cplmakerlab/surveys