in which I give tips on how to make scratch tickets

I know Christmas is over, but I still wanted to show you
guys how my nephew Elliott's coupon book came out!

My sister had it printed at Shutterfly, and it looks great! I'm sorry to say that some of the colors didn't print exactly right, but luckily none of them were too far off. Now all we needed to do was turn the multiple choice pages into scratch tickets. This was my first time making scratch tickets, and it was a lot of fun to do... but there was definitely a lot of trial and error! For anyone wanting to attempt this, here is my little how to/list of tips that I learned, so that you don't spend ages sitting at the table looking frustrated like this:

Ok for starters, here is how you make scratch ticket paint:

Materials:

any type of acrylic paint

dish soap

clear tape/stickers/labels

1. Mix paint with a few drops of dish soap

2. Paint multiple thin coats on top of clear adhesive of some kind

3. When dry, apply on top of whatever you want!

And... that's it!

On to the tips though, you'll find those basic directions (or some similar version) 

all over the internet. Here are the specifics I've learned however:

1. When mixing paint, some sites will tell you "2 parts paint, 1 part soap" or something like that... you do not need that much soap! Not only will the mixture get all bubbly and not paint on smoothly, but it dries kind of weird. Use only a few drops (assuming you aren't mixing up an entire bottle of paint) and you'll have no trouble.

2. You need to paint it on top of something clear and shiny (so that it scratches off easily) ... clear tape will do, but any office supply or craft store should have some kind of clear label or sticker which will be much easier to work with... which leads me to:

3. Paint it on the clear label, and then apply to paper. Doing this allows you to have straight perfect edges, because you can paint it on as messy as you like, and then cut shapes out of it. 

4. Apply thin coats, and let it dry completely between coats. If you don't, the paint kind of... shifts. I'm not sure of a better way to describe it, but it will leave you final layer looking weird.

5. Examine it from different angles before you decide you have enough coats of paint! 

Here is the very first attempt. I applied tape first, and had too much soap in the solution. You can see a black marker was used to make the boxes, which I didn't do later because it's too hard to cover that up! The edges were hard to keep looking nice and even, and the finish of the paint it all crackly looking. Not great!

Here is the second attempt. I fixed the paint and dish soap ratio, but I still applied tape first. Although on this one I felt I had to because of the odd shapes that were to be scratched off. I tried to paint carefully in the lines and I later touched up the edges (to make them as straight as possible) and you can see it isn't perfect, but certainly better than the first!

After those two, I decided to try painting some clear stickers and cutting them out afterwards. As you can see, it's about 1,000 times better! Also, because of the soap in the mixture, the paint doesn't chip at all when you cut it.... so really you could easily cut out any shape and it would look perfect!

Quick and easy application, I could paint everything all at once, and then just go
through the book and cut out all the right shapes and sizes. Easy peasy!

Here it is all wrapped up for Elliott... this was his big present this year,
so that's a giant gold E on front! I hear he saved it, too!

...if you didn't catch the original post, check it out here!