# Making a city map Christmas ornament with the Christmas Ornament Map preset > a round red-and-gold city ornament with a hanger hole A round map of a meaningful place - the city where you got engaged, grandma's hometown, baby's first Christmas address - styled in deep festive red with gold streets, ready to hang on the tree. The preset frames the city in a circle with a built-in border ring, and the export modal adds the hanger hole. These sell brilliantly at holiday markets and personalize in about two minutes per city. A note on the colors up front: the deep red land (`#7A1F2B`) and gold roads (`#F4D58D`) are a *design target*, not something a laser produces by itself. An engrave is monochrome - burn on whatever the material color is. To get the red-and-gold look you need one of: gold-on-red two-color acrylic, red-painted/stained stock where the engrave reveals gold or natural wood, gold acrylic with red paint fill, or UV/sublimation printing. Plain wood works too - it just becomes burnt-brown-on-tan instead of festive red. ## What you need ### Laser (recommended) - Ornament stock, ~75–90 mm: 3 mm [Baltic birch](https://yxecreations.com/collections/laser-grade-plywood), red-core two-color acrylic (red surface / gold or white core is the cheat code here), or pre-painted MDF rounds - Laser cutter/engraver (diode or CO2) - Ribbon, twine, ornament hooks, or [snap clips](https://yxecreations.com/products/keychain-snap-clips-multiple-colours) in a colour to match; optional gold paint pen for hand-filling engraved roads ### UV print - White or clear acrylic ornament blanks with pre-drilled holes, flatbed UV printer or print service ### Sublimation - White coated MDF/aluminum ornament blanks, sublimation printer, heat press ## Step 1 - Start from the preset Open [the Christmas Ornament Map preset](/map-designer?preset=christmas-ornament-map). It loads on Quebec City at zoom 13.4 - Old Quebec inside a circle frame with a red border ring. Search for your recipient's city. Framing tips: - Zoom 13–14 is the ornament sweet spot: at 80 mm diameter you want a *neighborhood-scale* map where individual streets stay legible after engraving. Whole-city zooms turn to mush at this size. - Center on the landmark, not the geometric city center - the church where they married, their actual street. - The circle crops aggressively; drag until the most recognizable shape (riverfront, old-town grid) sits in the middle two-thirds. ## Step 2 - Tune the layers One layer group, **Engraving** (Solid mode), painting the whole disc: - **Land** - deep red background (`#7A1F2B`) - **Water** - darker red (`#5A1620`) and **parks** - muted red (`#69323B`). Heads-up: these three reds are close in tone, so on a monochrome engrave water and parks barely separate from land. If you're engraving (not printing), either push water much darker / parks lighter so they map to distinct grayscale levels, or simply leave them as subtle texture and let the roads carry the design. - **Roads** - motorway (gold `#F4D58D`, width 4), primary (gold, 3), secondary (`#EFC97E`, 2), neighborhood streets (`#E5BC6F`, 1). On two-color acrylic these are your "engrave through to the core" lines; widths 4/3/2/1 give a lovely hierarchy at 80 mm. The global border (red, padding 12) gives the ornament a solid rim - keep it, it's what the hanger hole anchors into and it protects the streets from the edge of the cut. For engraving on plain wood, an easy improvement: set land to white (no engrave), roads to black (engrave) - the inverse of the preset - so the laser only burns the streets and the job runs in minutes instead of rastering the whole red disc. ## Step 3 - Export In the export modal: - **Enable the Hanger hole** in the Mounting holes panel - this is the make-or-break option. It adds a ring with a real hole; position it at the top center and size the hole ~3–4 mm for ribbon, smaller for wire hooks. The ring merges with the border so it cuts as part of the ornament. - **Laser:** download the **per-layer SVG** (or combined SVG). The circle boundary is your cut line; the features engrave. - **UV print / sublimation:** download the **high-res PNG (4096 px)** with the Background toggle on - this is where the red and gold actually print. - **Small-polygon cleanup** on, so stray street fragments don't pepper the engrave. ## Laser Cutting & Engraving ### Laser engrave + cut 1. Load the SVG in your laser software at final size (75–90 mm diameter is classic tree scale). 2. Assign operations: features = engrave, outer circle + hanger hole = cut, cut last. 3. On two-color acrylic: raster the roads (and optionally water) through the red cap layer to expose the gold core - instant red-and-gold without paint. 4. On wood: engrave, then cut; optionally trace the major roads with a gold paint pen, or spray the blank red first and let the engrave burn through to bare wood. 5. Cut the perimeter and hanger hole, clean smoke residue (de-mask acrylic, light sand or hand wipe on wood). 6. Thread ribbon through the hanger hole and tie a loop. ## UV & Sublimation Printing ### UV print on acrylic blanks 1. Buy pre-cut circular blanks with holes, or cut your own circle + hanger hole first from the SVG. 2. UV-print the PNG aligned to the blank (print white underbase first on clear acrylic so the red stays rich). 3. Optionally engrave the recipient's name and year on the back. ### Sublimation on MDF blanks 1. Print the PNG mirrored on sublimation paper sized to the blank. 2. Press ~200 °C / 60 s on a coated white MDF ornament blank, centered with heat tape. ## Make it yours - Engrave the year and city name in the border ring - the padding-12 rim has just enough room for small text. - "First Christmas in our new home" series: same city, new house centered, new year, every year. - Swap the palette: forest green land + warm white roads, or navy + silver for Hanukkah-friendly decor. - Cut from clear or glitter [acrylic](https://yxecreations.com/pages/acrylic-sheets) and engrave only the roads - hung in front of tree lights, the streets glow. - Make a garland: five small ornaments of the five cities someone has lived in, strung on one ribbon. - Use the heart export shape instead of the circle for an anniversary ornament. - Batch mode for markets: keep the layout, swap only the searched city - one engrave file per town in your region. --- Open the tool: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/christmas-ornament-map Read online: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/christmas-ornament-map