Shadow box card tutorial: free template and instructions
How to make a shadow box card: the two ways they are built, a free layered template you can set to 5 × 7 in or A6, foam spacing, the steps, and posting it.
Published
A shadow box card is a greeting card with depth. A frame sits at the front and one or more cut layers sit behind it with a small gap between them, so the picture is seen inside a shallow box and casts real shadows. It is layered paper art made small and thin enough to give as a card. This guide covers the two ways such a card is built, a free template you can set to a card size, and the steps from cutting to posting.
The two kinds of shadow box card
| Foam-spaced card | Fold-flat box card | |
|---|---|---|
| What holds the layers apart | Foam tape or foam pads between the sheets | Folded paper walls at the sides |
| Does it fold flat? | No. It stays as thick as its foam | Yes. The walls fold and the layers close up |
| What you cut | The layered sheets and a card base | The sheets, and side walls to hold them |
| How it travels | A rigid mailer or a small box | An envelope |
| How hard it is | Easy: cut, stack and stick | Harder: the walls have to be measured and folded |
The files on this site make the foam-spaced kind. Every shadow box scene is a set of sheets with matching borders, numbered from the back, to stack with foam and mount on a folded card. For the fold-flat kind, also called a pop-up shadow box card, the scenes give you the sheets but not the walls. There is a section on it below.
A free template at card size
Each scene on the shadow box page opens in a maker on its own page. It is free, with no sign-up, and whatever you set there goes into the files. For a card, four things matter.
Frame size. The list under “Frame size” includes 5 × 7 in, 7 × 5 in landscape, 6 × 6 in and A5. For A6, choose “Your own size…” and type 105 for the width and 148 for the height. Your own size takes any width and height from 80 to 600 mm, in millimetres or in inches, and it is the size of every sheet. A scene drawn square changes shape at an upright or a landscape size: the parts keep their place across the width, so on a narrower sheet they close up. Drag apart anything that now overlaps.
Sheets. Most scenes come with five or six sheets, and a card wants three or four. In the list headed “Sheets, back to front”, the × beside a sheet removes it; the back sheet has none. A removed sheet takes its parts with it, so first select anything you want to keep and move it with the button that names the sheet it will go to, such as “Bring forward to sheet 3”. A part sent to sheet 1, the back, becomes a hole. Undo puts a removed sheet back.
Border. Under “Colours and frame”, Thinner and Thicker change the border, and its width is shown in millimetres. It runs from 3% to 12% of the sheet’s height: 5 to 21 mm on an upright 5 × 7 in sheet and 4 to 18 mm on upright A6. Most scenes start at 6%, which is 11 mm and 9 mm at those sizes and 8 mm on a 7 × 5 in landscape sheet. The foam sits on the border, so make it a few millimetres wider than your tape.
The file check. After every change the maker welds each sheet into one outline and measures it at the size you chose. The pill at the top reads “Ready to cut”, or says how many things there are to fix. Three things stop the download: a loose piece, a sheet almost hidden by the ones in front, and a part narrower than 0.6 mm. A part between 0.6 and 1 mm does not stop it, but its sheet is marked “fine”, to be cut slowly with a sharp blade.
“Download the SVG files” gives a zip with one SVG for each sheet, numbered from the back, one more with all the sheets in it, and a text note. The files are in millimetres at the size you set. The note is written for a framed box, so for a card ignore its frame depth and its 3 to 5 mm foam.
Scenes that suit a card
Small cards punish fine detail. A scene that passes the check at 8 inches can be refused at card size, and one that passes at 5 × 7 in can be refused at A6. Here are two scenes with bold shapes:
- Christmas tree in the snow. Five bold sheets with nothing hanging on a thread. Remove “Far firs” for four. The check then finds nothing under 1.7 mm at 5 × 7 in and nothing under 1.4 mm at A6.
- Paper boat on the waves. A landscape scene of six sheets. Remove “Second row” and “Third row” for four. At 7 × 5 in, and at A6 on its side (148 × 105 mm), the check passes all four. The finest card is in the far waves, about 1 mm at its narrowest, so cut that sheet slowly with a sharp blade.
Card sizes and their envelopes
| Card | Sheet size to set | Envelope | Size against an 8 in sheet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 × 7 in, upright | 127 × 177.8 mm (in the list) | US A7, 5.25 × 7.25 in (133.4 × 184.2 mm) | 0.875 |
| 7 × 5 in, landscape | 177.8 × 127 mm (in the list) | US A7 | 0.625 |
| A6, upright | 105 × 148 mm (4.13 × 5.83 in), your own size | C6, 114 × 162 mm (4.49 × 6.38 in) | 0.73 |
| A5, upright | 148 × 210 mm (5.83 × 8.27 in), in the list | C5, 162 × 229 mm (6.38 × 9.02 in) | 1.03 |
The US A7 envelope has nothing to do with the A7 sheet of the international A series, which is 74 × 105 mm.
The last column is what happens to detail. Parts, borders and threads all scale with the height of the sheet, so a part 1 mm wide on a sheet 8 inches tall is 0.875 mm on upright 5 × 7 in, 0.73 mm on upright A6 and 0.625 mm on landscape 7 × 5 in. The thread a bird or a balloon hangs from is about 1.4 mm wide on upright 5 × 7 in and 1.2 mm on upright A6. Under 1 mm a part wants a new blade and a slow cut. Under 0.6 mm the maker refuses it, because a neck of card that thin tears when the sheet is lifted off the mat.
Each scene’s page lists the narrowest part of every sheet at its own size, so you can estimate before you start. It is only a guide: the parts shift when the sheet changes shape, so where they join can change. Go by the check in the maker at the size you will cut.
Materials and spacing
| Thing | What to get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Card for the sheets | 160 to 220 gsm, smooth | Lighter card sags; heavier is hard to cut finely and adds thickness |
| Card for the base | Stiffer than the sheets, 220 gsm or more | It has to stand up with the stack on its front |
| Spacers | Foam tape or foam pads, 1 or 2 mm thick | The 3 to 5 mm foam of a framed box would put 9 to 15 mm of foam in a four-sheet card |
| Glue or double-sided tape | For fixing the stack to the base | The back sheet is whole, so it sticks down flat |
The foam is most of the thickness. A stack has one gap fewer than it has sheets:
| Sheets | Gaps | With 1 mm foam | With 2 mm foam |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 2 | 2 mm | 4 mm |
| 4 | 3 | 3 mm | 6 mm |
| 5 | 4 | 4 mm | 8 mm |
Add the card itself. To find how thick yours is, press ten offcuts together, measure them and divide by ten.
Three or four sheets keep a card thin. The layered paper art guide says that so few read flatter than five to seven, and that is true: on a card it is the price of a thin stack.
Step by step
- Set up the scene. Open a scene with bold shapes, set the size, remove sheets until three or four are left, and make the border thicker if your foam needs it. For a margin of base showing round the picture, set the sheet about 10 mm smaller each way than the card: 117 × 168 mm on a 5 × 7 in card.
- Wait for “Ready to cut”, then download. If the check names a sheet, select it and follow the message: make the part bigger, join a loose piece to the ground, or go up a size.
- Cut every sheet at the same size. The files are SVG, for any cutting machine whose software opens them. The machine cutting guide covers the mat, the blade and checking the size on the canvas; the layered paper art guide covers cutting by hand.
- Stack from the back. Lay the sheets out in order, sheet 1 at the back. Put foam round the border of sheet 1 on all four sides, a few millimetres back from the inner edge so it cannot be seen, and press sheet 2 on with the edges level. Carry on to the front.
- Mount it. For a 5 × 7 in card, cut a base 10 × 7 in; for A6, use an A5 sheet; for A5, an A4 sheet. Score the fold against a ruler, fold it, and fix the back sheet to the front of the base. Or leave the stack as a panel with no base, to go in a small frame.
- Write inside. The maker does not add words. Write the greeting inside the card or on the bottom border, or cut it from the library’s letters and glue it on.
The moon, sun or stars in a scene are holes in the back sheet, so on a card they show whatever is behind. A pale base, or a slip of pale yellow paper under the back sheet, makes them read as light.
If it has to fold flat
The foam build cannot. There are three other ways.
Leave the foam out. Glue the sheets straight onto each other by their borders. The card is then only as thick as its paper and goes in an envelope like any other card. The depth is slight, so let colour do the work: palest sheet at the back, darkest at the front.
Add bellows at the sides. This is how a paper peepshow, also called a tunnel book, is built. The Victoria and Albert Museum describes a peepshow as a front and a back panel with cut-out prints between them, linked by bellows on the sides or at the top and bottom, which looks like a stretched-out concertina when open and collapses when closed. For a card, each bellows is a strip of paper as tall as the sheets, folded into a zigzag of narrow, equal panels, with the side borders of the sheets glued into the folds that open towards the middle. Two panels of strip then lie between each sheet and the next, so two sheets can never stand further apart than those two panels end to end. It is drawn open by hand. This site has no file for the strips and has not tested a size for them, so work yours out in scrap paper before you cut card.
Use a pop-up step. For a card that stands up by itself as it opens, the library’s pop-up card templates are sheets with a step that rises when the card is opened to a right angle and lies flat when it is shut. A cut-out glued to the front of the step stands clear of the wall behind it. That is one layer of depth, not a stack of sheets.
Posting it
A foam-spaced card is thick, and its foam and its cut parts crush. Send it in a rigid card mailer or a small flat box, with a piece of stiff card laid over the front, or hand it over in person.
An envelope has to go round the thickness as well as the width, so it needs to be wider and taller than the card by at least the card’s thickness. A 5 × 7 in card has 6.35 mm to spare each way in a US A7 envelope, and a four-sheet stack on 2 mm foam is 6 mm of foam plus its card, which is more than that. A6 has 9 and 14 mm to spare in C6, and A5 has 14 and 19 mm in C5.
This guide gives no postal sizes or prices: they differ from one postal service to another, and they change. Measure the finished card in its envelope, thickness included, weigh it, and check both against your postal service’s own page before you buy the stamp.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A layer sags or touches the one behind | Foam at the corners only, or card that is too light | Run the foam round all four sides and put a small piece behind any large part, where the sheet in front hides it |
| Details tear when cutting or lifting | A part under 1 mm at card size, a dull blade or a sticky mat | Fit a new blade, cut slowly and peel the mat from the card; or press Bigger on the part, or go up a size |
| The foam shows through the window | It sits too near the inner edge of the border | Move it back, or make the border thicker in the maker and cut again |
| The card will not close | The stack is mounted inside the card | Mount it on the front; or give the base a spine, with two folds as far apart as the stack is thick |
| The sheets do not line up | One was resized on its own in the cutting software | Set every sheet to the same width with the proportions locked |
Questions
Can a shadow box card go in a normal envelope? One with the foam left out can. A foam-spaced card needs an envelope larger than the card by at least its thickness, and it is better protected in a rigid mailer or a box.
How many layers should a shadow box card have? Three or four. That is two or three gaps, or 2 to 6 mm of foam.
Is the template free? Yes. The scenes are free for personal and commercial use with no sign-up, and the files are made in your browser.
Can I cut one without a machine? Yes. Print each sheet at full size and cut it with a craft knife on a cutting mat. Choose a scene with plain shapes: the pages for the Christmas tree and the paper boat above both say how to cut them by hand.
Can I put a light in it? Not as a card. The light box guide allows about 15 mm behind the back sheet for the lights, which a card does not have. Cut the same scene at a larger size for a deep frame, and send the card with it.