Sweetpea ordered a package of pink glitter scratch art from her latest school book order. (It was similar to this.) She loves this stuff. Can't get enough. She made me a lovely picture (several, actually) and as I was looking at it, I realized that it was just holographic card stock with a black layer of. . . well, it looked like paint.
So I said to her, "Let's do an experiment. Let's find some of this sparkly holographic paper. We'll paint half of it with brushed on acrylic paint and spray the other half with spray paint, and see if we can make our own scratch art."
She loved the idea, of course.
Finding the holographic paper was the hardest part. Both my regular craft stores had rough glitter paper, but nothing smooth. It has to be smooth. I finally found this at JoAnn's for 99cents.
I cut the paper in half and let her paint on the black craft paint. It should be completely covered.
I'll skip the suspense and let you know now that the spray paint did not work. It was too thin, and didn't scratch off well. Perhaps it would have worked with multiple coats, but I doubt it. I really think the thick viscosity of the acrylic craft paint is the key to good scratching here.
After it was dry, I cut the black into four small pieces and gave them to the kids.
Sweetpea had a designated scratching stick from her previous purchase. For Little Mister, I took a rounded toothpick and sanded the tip a little bit so it wasn't too sharp.
They had a blast! Little Mister didn't like the mess of the black paint that scratched off, but he got over it. It was a fun afternoon activity, but they went through the paper very quickly. Next time I'll buy more sheets and make a big batch. Super fun. :)
