This same child inspired our fall paper plate crafts, a disco party and took us to a local pottery studio.  She enjoys creating scratch art, but after seeing the prices of the paper, she wanted to try her hand at making her own scratch art paper.

She tried a few different methods to find the one that worked the best. For each method, she started with a square of cardstock and used acrylic paint.

Method #1

She used a piece of colored cardstock and painted a layer of black acrylic paint on top. The paint was firmly bonded to the paper. When she scratched a design, it was very faint and allowed little of the colored cardstock to show through.

Method #2

This time she painted red acrylic paint onto a piece of white cardstock. After it dried, she covered it with a layer of black acrylic paint. Scratching a design in this method barely left an indention in the black paint and no color showed through.

Method #3

For her final test, she colored a piece of white cardstock with crayon and then covered it with black acrylic paint. Success! It worked as well as the scratch art paper we have bought. I read mixing a little dish soap with tempera paint also worked. We didn’t have any tempera paint on hand, but tried mixing a couple of drops of dish soap with the acrylic paint and it wasn’t as effective.

If your kiddos want to make their valentines into an art project, here is an inexpensive and fun way to go. You can be pretty sure they will be different from the rest of the class’s!

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