I designed a snowflake cutout to use with my laser cutter for my holiday cards. Laser cuts can be much more precise than electric cutters like Cricut because there is not a dragging knife blade, however, there is a potential for burn. What I found interesting is that colored card stock had less burn than white card stock at the same settings. Hm. A product of reflection, maybe? Something in the way the paper is made?

I accidentally stacked two white sheets in the cutter at one point, which was disastrous with the burn marks, especially on the bottom page.

Now I can see an artful application of this smoke effect, but not on snowflakes.

To design the snowflakes, I did traditional paper cutouts, took photos, converted the photos to scalable vector graphics, them combined them in Adobe Illustrator.

The cards are printed and cut, but are still on the craft table and not in the mail. Why? I want to write on the back and that desire became a stumbling block. I had to choose to send them out before the New Year, or send them with writing, whenever I could find the words to write. I obviously chose to send late.