Professor David Cumming and Dr Qin Chen from the University’s School of Engineering etched  their Christmas tree image onto a minute sliver of glass.

“Our nanotechnology is among the best in the world but sometimes explaining to the public what technology is capable of can be a bit tricky," said Professor Cumming.

He made it easy for traditionalists by offering a Christmas tree and that yawningly boring, but by now apparently the definitive standard, a human hair. The manufacture process of the 200 x 290 micrometres tall card, took all of half an hour.

Actually as Christmas cards went, Gaberluzie rather cared for for the Scottish Agricultural College view of the Skye Bridge, and the fact that each card sent aids RSABI, the modern charity of the older Royal Scottish Agricultureal Benevolent Institution.

It's interesting when academics find other similes to translate the nano to us Gulliver types.

Last summer, TU DelftKavli Institute researchers suspended an attention getting vibrating carbon nanotube,  similar to an 'ultra small violin string' and applied an alternating electric field to it, using an antenna, and also captured a single electron in the nanotube.

But the  current nano photo spot is being charmingly held by those periodic table video-centrics  Nottingham University Nanotechnology & Nanoscience Centre, that has now engraved the periodic table of the elements onto a single hair from the head of chemist Martyn Poliakoff, and given it to him for his birthday present.

They used a gallium ion electron beam microscope to carve one of the smallest periodic table of elements in just seconds. Each symbol on the table is 4microns high and the entire table of elements was just 88microns wide by 46 microns tall.

Sometimes Gaberlunzie gets curious about the whole nano-skill carbon footprint, and just how small they can get that.