Free shadow box template

Street corner shadow box SVG

A street corner in the city: towers on the skyline, a coffee shop and a barber across the road, a car waiting at the traffic light beside a street lamp, and a street sign, a fire hydrant, a mailbox and a stop sign on the near pavement. 5 sheets of card, cut and stacked with a gap between each, make the picture. The files are free, and every part of the scene can be moved, swapped or resized below before you download.

Street corner shadow box: 5 layered sheets seen from the front

Download the SVG files

5 sheets at 8 × 8 in, zipped, with a note on putting them together.

Free for personal and commercial use, no sign-up. What you can do with it.

The 5 sheets

Sheet 1 is the back and sheet 5 is the front. Each one is a single piece with the same frame round its edge, so they line up when stacked. The colours shown are the “Autumn” set; cut them in any card you like. Cut sheet 5, “Signs”, the slowest: at 1 mm it has the thinnest part in the scene, and sheet 5, “Signs”, fills the most of the view, 33% of it.

Sheet	What is on it	Narrowest part	Seen from the front
1. Sun	A whole sheet with holes for: Plain disc	over 2 mm	31%
2. Skyline	Flat ground, with: Skyline cityscape with a rising sun and Office building for a skyline	1.3 mm	8%
3. Shops	Flat ground, with: Coffee shop storefront with a cup on the roof and Barber shop storefront with a striped pole	1.2 mm	12%
4. Traffic light	Flat ground, with: Traffic light signal on a pole, Car from the side and Lantern on a lamp post	1.3 mm	14%
5. Signs	Flat ground, with: Street sign with two blank blades, Firefighter hydrant, Mailbox with the flag up and Stop sign on a post	1 mm	33%

Measured from the files at 8 × 8 in. The narrowest part is the thinnest neck of card that holds anything on; sharp tips are not counted. “Seen from the front” is the share of the picture that sheet fills once the sheets in front of it are in place.

Will it cut at your size?

The download is 8 × 8 in. The scene maker above makes the same scene at any of these sizes; the thinnest part scales with it.

Frame opening	Each sheet	Narrowest part	Depth needed	Fits a 12 × 12 in mat	Rule of thumb
6 × 6 in	152.4 × 152.4 mm	0.8 mm	17 mm	Yes	Fine detail: sharp blade, slow speed
20 × 20 cm	200 × 200 mm	1 mm	17 mm	Yes	Fine detail: sharp blade, slow speed
8 × 8 in	203.2 × 203.2 mm	1 mm	17 mm	Yes	Cuts easily
23 × 23 cm	230 × 230 mm	1.1 mm	17 mm	Yes	Cuts easily
25 × 25 cm	250 × 250 mm	1.2 mm	17 mm	Yes	Cuts easily

Depth needed allows 3 mm of foam between sheets and 5 mm for the card itself and the backing.

Making this one

The signs are blank, so the corner can be any corner: write the street names on the two boards of the sign by hand, or cut them in vinyl. The traffic light has three holes for its lamps, so back them with red, amber and green paper before you stack the sheets. The posts of the signs on the front sheet are the thinnest card, at about 1 mm at 8 inches, and the windows of the shops come next at 1.2 mm. Nothing hangs on a thread.

Cut all 5 sheets from 160 to 220 gsm card at the same size.
Lay them out in order, sheet 1 at the back.
Put strips of 3 mm foam tape round the border of sheet 1 and press sheet 2 onto it with the edges level. Carry on to sheet 5.
Fit the stack into a deep frame with the front sheet against the glass. For a light box, run a strip of warm white LEDs round the inside of the frame behind the stack.

The zip includes these steps as a text file, each sheet as its own SVG and all 5 side by side in one SVG. More on paper, frames and lights is on the shadow box page.

The parts, on their own

Everything in the scene comes from the free SVG library, where each has its own page and file:

Questions

Can I change the signs?

Yes. Select one in the maker and choose Swap: a yield sign, a caution sign, a railway crossing and a group of road signs are under Other things.

Can I put our own street names on it?

Not inside the maker yet. The two boards of the street sign are solid card, so a name can be written on them by hand, or cut from the lettering in the library and glued on.

Can I sell boxes I make with it?

Yes. Finished pieces are yours to sell. The files themselves may not be sold or shared; send people to this page. See the licence.

More shadow box scenes

All scenes and the scene maker