DIY Scratch Art Cards

Looking for a fun Valentine card or party favor you can make? These DIY scratch art cards are easy to make and a fun activity for your kids.

Do you have a favorite art project memory from your childhood?

I have a few, but one of my favorite memories is making scratch art. When I was a kid we would use colorful crayons to color a picture on paper. Then we would color over it with black crayon. It was messy fun. The wax crayon particles got EVERYWHERE! Especially when we scratched designs into the black crayon, revealing the colors underneath.

Well, I found a different method of making scratch art that is a little less messy and a lot of fun!

Plus you can use these DIY scratch art cards as Valentine’s cards or as a party favor for an art themed birthday. And they are a great project to make ‘just for fun’ too.

What you will need:

• Black acrylic paint
• Water
• Paint brush
• Paint tray or cup to mix paint on
• Crayons or oil pastels
• Toothpick or paper clip (for scratching off the black paint later)
• Scissors
• Cardstock
• The Card Printable PDF available in my free resource library – if you don’t have it already, you can get the password by filling out the form at the bottom of this page)

Steps to Make DIY Scratch Art Cards

Step 1: Print & Color

If you are using my pdf, print it on cardstock. If you prefer to come up with your own card, just grab a piece of cardstock.

Note: It is definitely important to use a thicker paper for this project. Normal printer paper will not hold up nearly as well.

Color one side of the cardstock. (The side that is not printed if using the pdf.)

I used crayons, but you can also use oil pastels. If you use crayons, try to find high quality crayons that color with a thick layer of wax.

Color bright patches and designs with a lot of colors to get the best scratch art effect later. Make sure that all of the paper is colored. If you leave any white uncolored patches, the paint will bleed through to the other side.

Step 2: Mix, Paint, Repeat

Once you have your sheet of paper colored, grab your black acrylic paint.

I found that watering down the paint gave it a smoother finish.

The two methods that worked the best for me were:

1. Mixing 1 part paint to 2 parts water and painting this onto the crayon
2. Painting black acrylic paint over the crayon and then coming back over it with plain water. (Work in small sections for this method.)

In either method, you will most likely need to paint multiple thin coats. The waxy crayon caused the watered down paint to disperse when I painted over it. If this happens to you, let your paint dry and paint another layer on top.

Step 3: Cut out the scratch art cards

After the paint is dry, cut out the scratch art cards.

And that is it. Your DIY scratch art cards are ready for you to use or give. You can either use a toothpick or bend a paper clip to scratch out the designs on the cards.

2 Methods for Packaging your scratch art cards

There are probably many ways to package these cards, but here are two easy ones.

1. Use a clear plastic bags (I used fold top sandwich bags) and place both the card and toothpick inside. Add any other ‘favors’ (candy, stickers, etc.) inside the bag. Tie it with a red ribbon.
2. Stick a paper clip on the outside of the card. This can be used to attach any extra candy or stickers to the card and it doubles as the scratch art ‘pen’.

I hope that you enjoy making these cards this year with the kids in your life. And I hope that it maybe brings back fun childhood memories too.

If you want to make another fun Valentine’s Day craft, try these cute Valentine’s card flowers with suckers. Not only do they work as Valentine’s cards, but they also are a fun Valentine’s Day decoration. Or create this heart 3D canvas art with toilet paper rolls to add to your decor.

Want to remember this idea for later? Save it to your favorite DIY or craft board on Pinterest.

What are some of your favorite childhood crafts? I would love to hear about them.