Every year for the past couple of years I have made my Grandma a Christmas card. She always leaves the card on display pretty much all year round. It’s usually based around something she enjoys; birds, figure skating, or her dog. Every year it seems to get a little bigger and a little more non-cardlike. This year I just could not think of what to make. I wanted to make something special since she recently suffered from a stroke and has been experiencing a lot of anguish. I sat a brainstormed for a long time. At around 10 PM the night before I was to give it to her, I got an idea in my head. It was going to be a lot of work, and there was a pretty high chance it would just fail entirely. Four or five hours of speedy work later, this was the result:
![](https://i0.wp.com/npopson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/xmascard.jpg?resize=600%2C431)
To explain things a little, I made the frame and then tried to make a 3-dimensional scene inside of it (with lighting in the background). The frame is made out of oak, which I cut from a plank laying around the garage. I cut an eighth inch slit around the inside of the frame for the glass to sit in. I stole the glass from an old dollarstore document frame and cut it to fit inside the oak slit. I had no idea what would be going inside the frame yet; I would worry about it while that while the wood glue was drying. So I went onto the computer and started making something with vectors. I knew I wanted a mountain scene. After a while of playing around, I had something I was happy with. Silhouettes of all the stuff I know my Grandma enjoys, in a night scene which I tried to make look like the foothills of Alberta. I printed the foreground and background images I made, and cut them to shape with scissors. Now I was onto the final step, the lighting. All I had was green LED’s. I would have preferred a variety colors, but I had to make do with what I had. I didn’t even have resistors, but I believe the LED’s were each 3V, so I soldered two of them in parallel with two AA batteries. I found a little toggle switch and mounted it to the backing of the frame. I hot-glued everything down inside so nothing could jiggle around, and closed it all up. It was complete.
I don’t really like how it looks with the lights on, but whatever, at least it’s optional.
![](https://i0.wp.com/npopson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/xmascardon.jpg?resize=600%2C431)
I’m not sure what’s up with my terrible pictures. It must’ve been the lack of sleep.