Homemade Scratch Tickets: A Tutorial

Things you will need:
printed scratch cards: I suggest card stock
slick, thick packing tape
dish soap
black acrylic paint
foam paintbrush
warm place to dry

Optional:
colored scrapbook paper
double sided tape
(to back the cards: which made them sturdier and cute!)
Here are images of my scratch ticket printables. A friend of mine in my “Buy Nothing” community actually offered to print these – and even offered her own card stock – so that I saved a bunch of money on printing costs. My Buy Nothing family is sure wonderful!
I created them using an online word art maker and Microsoft Word.
 

 
As you can see the last image has two tickets that are “winners.” One that announced “girl” and one “boy.” After covering them fully with the black scratch off paint I took both of these in separate envelopes to the ultrasound technician. They were each in white envelopes with removable tags attached. I asked the technician to throw away the incorrect card and the label for the correct card, then give it back to us in an envelope. This kept the results a secret from my husband and me, and was fairly simple for the technician. I think it is important to keep whatever you ask of them simple – this is a favor they are doing for you – they don’t HAVE to do this for you. Then at the party my friend Heather counted the guests at the party and the correct number of cards, adding in the winning ticket. That  ensured that the winning ticket would get passed out to the guests and wouldn’t be in the pile of extra tickets that didn’t get scratched and that we wouldn’t know who got the winning ticket.
In order to make the scratch off portion of the ticket you will need to cover the lower half of the card (or just the area you want to be scratch able) with thick, slick packing tape.
 

Then mix one part dish soap with one part acrylic paint. I did this one teaspoon at a time to keep mess down and not waste soap or paint. I found that the only color that would cover the black mustaches was black paint. I know from reading up on making these that the darker the paint the easier it is – supposedly. I still had to do at least 2 or 3 coats to get them fully covered and looking smooth and neat. I used a foam paintbrush and it seemed to make the coverage process easier.

I found that letting them dry in the sun made the process quicker and simpler. I was able to do more coats quickly, which was important since I made 25 tickets.
I was very careful to make sure that each card had all three of the mustaches or sashes were fully covered so no one could peak. It was also very important to keep the boy and girl winning tickets labeled with the removable label as you paint them. You don’t want to get them mixed up with each other or with non winning cards. That would be disastrous!

I just paper clipped a piece of paper to them that said “boy” or “girl” and then moved those to the envelopes when I took them to the technician. That way I knew they wouldn’t get mixed up. 

Let them dry fully and you are ready to go!
Simple as that.
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A couple of tips:
1. Have coins on hand for scratching – you don’t want to do it with your finger even though you can.
2. I would scratch outside if I could. OR clean up as soon as I could. The black flecks went EVERYWHERE and were quite hard to get off my floor after the guests had walked over them and they had stuck to my wood floors. It took sweeping, and two wipe downs on my hands and knees to get most of the flecks off the floor. 🙂
3. Backing the cards on scrapbook paper made them sturdier and cute!
4. Keep the winning tickets labeled and then put them in separate envelopes so you can’t figure out the results, even accidentally.

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