I decided to make my wife a mother’s day card this year rather than sorting through the greeting card racks at the local drug store and suffering through their sappy copy writing. 

My idea, which came to me in the shower like most of my crazy ideas, was to use layers of thin wood veneer to craft a handmade card and envelope, decorating it with an elaborate marquetry design in the shape of my message. Brilliant, I thought. Have you ever seen a wooden greeting card before? For a woodworker, you can’t get more personal than that. 

With my deadline looming, I pulled out a stack of decorative veneers, my utility knife, some masking tape and wood glue, and got to work cutting small wood shapes of various colors from my collection of bubinga, lacewood and maple veneers. Let’s just say, my idea didn’t work out at all. Veneer warps something terrible when you apply glue to it without a flat clamping press of some sort. Eventually it began to look more like a clamshell than a greeting card. Not to mention, writing a message from marquetry pieces is easier said than done.

Frustrated and nearly out of veneer, I scraped my work and simplified the project. I cut a single piece of maple veneer in the shape of a card, made a score with my utility knife down the centerline to facilitate the fold, and decorated it with a hand-drawn doodle and message. I added some extra support to the wood fibers on the fold with a thin strip of masking tape.

It’s not the veneered masterpiece that Silas Kopf would give his mom, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

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