My husband and I went to the TechShop http://www.techshop.ws for a 4 hour learning session. He had taken an adavanced laser techniques class recently and was going to show me some of what he learned and we were going to try new materials and skills.
We found this card at the epilog site http://www.epiloglaser.com Epilog is the maker of the laser cutters at the TechShop.

Step 1:

the card is made of 3 layers - the bottom is green and has a simple perforated fold line cut by the laser.
the next layer is the white. Snowflakes were cut out. This is the layer that gave me the most trouble. I kept having smoke smudges on the white. I tweaked the settings - less power more speed. I thought the back side would be better but the back side was scorched. So finally I put a second piece of card stock under the white. There were still smudges, but this time the back would work out fine.

Step 2:

The top layer - the red layer - was the part that was most intriguing. I was not convinced that etching red paper would give nearly white script. And the first time around it didn't. But again, I tweaked, and up the power and lowered the speed. What do you know, it worked.

Step 3:

so it took some trials of testing and tweaking and if anyone has a suggestion for avoiding those smudges on white paper I would love to know.

Step 4:

I used a sewing machine needle to poke out those little snowflakes - it has the heft and more of a handle

Step 5:

I glued the layers in place

Step 6:

it was a learning day, playing with the laser cutter at the TechShop http://www.techshop.ws - those 4 hours zipped by. It is a lot more fun when I go home with something I can use.
here's the link if you want to try it yourself http://ww.epiloglaser.com/sc_christmascard.htm