Celebrate a Summer Christmas with this Surfing Santa Layered SVG

Do you celebrate Christmas in summer? Here’s a layered SVG design of Santa enjoying the sunshine instead of his usual Winter snow!

Welcome to Day 5 of the Christmas Craft Countdown, where I’m revealing a new Christmas craft project every day for 20 days.

Today’s project is a little bit different to what you might be expecting for Christmas and it is this surfing Santa. I had so many requests to do a layered design that would be suitable for countries where Christmas is in the middle of summer and this is what we came up with.

Santa is off on his holidays, enjoying the sunshine and showing off his surfing skills!

Layered surfing Santa SVG video tutorial

Watch the video below to see how to make the layered surfing Santa SVG. Keep scrolling for a written tutorial.

Materials list to make a surfing Santa papercraft project

Here is a list of the materials that I used to make this project:

Please note that some of the links included in this article are affiliate links, which means that if you click through and make a purchase I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). You can read my full disclosure at the bottom of the page.

• Cricut Maker
• Light blue Cricut cutting mat
• Coloured Card (I used 160gsm-240gsm weight of card)
• Patterned paper (mine is from a now-retired scrapbook set)
• Collall All Purpose Glue
• Needle Tip Applicator Bottle
• 3D foam pads
• Shadow box (I used a 20x20cm shadow box from Hobbycraft)

Layered Father Christmas SVG assembly instructions

Here’s how to make your very own summer Santa wall art using a Cricut machine!

Step 1) Download the file & unzip the downloaded folder

Use the box below to download the cutting files for this project. Please note that this is not a free file.

It is part of the Christmas Craft Countdown which is a collection of 20 exclusive Christmas themed craft projects.

Before you upload the SVG to Design Space, you need to unzip the download folder that it comes in.

• How to unzip a folder on Windows computer
• How to unzip a folder on a Mac
• How to unzip a folder on an iPad/iPhone
• How to unzip a folder on an Android device

Step 2) Upload the SVG file into Design Space

Open up Cricut Design Space and upload the file called SVG_Surfing_Santa_CraftWithSarah.svg

Make sure you upload the file which starts SVG_ in the filename!!

This is how it should look after you have uploaded the file:

After uploading, the design will show in your “Recently Uploaded Images”. Click on it and then press “Add to Canvas” to put it onto your Project.

Click the design on your canvas and use the width/height boxes near the top of the screen to make it the size that you want to cut it.

Get my top tips for sizing layered designs to fit in a frame by watching the video below…

I made my Santa 7.5 inches wide to fit inside the shadow box. I definitely wouldn’t recommend going much smaller than about 6 inches in width as some of the details are quite small so if you make the design smaller it may be difficult to cut.

When you’re happy with the size of the Santa SVG in Design Space, click “Make It” and follow the instructions on-screen to cut out all the layers.

Step 3) Stick the layered Santa together

Use 3D foam pads and glue to stick the layers together.

Use this guide to see the order to stick the layers together in. A high quality printable version of this assembly guide (without the watermark pattern!) is included in the folder when you download the SVG.

My favourite glue to use on papercraft projects is Collall All Purpose Glue.

It’s SO good because it doesn’t “warp” or bend the cardstock like some glues do. You can use as much of it as you want and the card stays perfect – and it dries perfectly clear too!

To make it even easier to apply glue to layered card projects, I highly recommend getting some of these needle tip applicator bottles to put the glue into.

The nozzles are REALLY tiny which makes them perfect for putting glue in the pieces of cardstock that make up this surfing Santa.

Some of the layers will be stuck together with 3D foam pads to give more dimension and create the “3D” appearance.

When adding the foam pads to the relevant layers, make sure you add some in the middle of the pieces of card so it give stability to the middles. If you don’t add any foam pads in the middles then it can “sag” under the weight of the other layers which doesn’t look as good.

Step 4) Frame your layered surfing Santa papercraft project

The final step is to frame your summer Christmas craft!

I cut a piece of blue patterned scrapbook paper to go behind the layered design in the frame.

And here is the finished result…

I hope that you enjoy this layered “Christmas in Summer” SVG!

Happy crafting,
Sarah x