Scratch and win pregnancy announcements

The itty bitty, teeny weeny, faintest of lines

that changed everything

Photo credit: me

A few weeks after I deposited my dissertation, H and I decided to revisit our plan to have children. We were very quiet about trying to get pregnant, discussing the possibility with no one but my doctor.

We weren't private for long, because 10 days after we decided to try I found myself holding the plastic wand pictured above.  Unabashedly excited about this child, I decided to come up with a playful way to tell my parents the news.

Around 13 weeks, we decided to make scratch and win tickets by following these instructions. Basically, I designed a game-like card and printed it on cardstock. I made mine in powerpoint, saved it as a tif and printed it on our colour inkejet printer at home.

Now to make it a scratch card. Martha Stewart's tutorial suggested painting the circles with a mix of liquid acrylic paint and dish detergent. The trick to making the card easy to scratch is to first cover the areas to be scratched with clear packing tape before painting.  If you just paint the card, you'll have gooey paint on a card that will not scratch off.

Stick a stretch of packing tape to wax paper. The wax paper acts as the sticker backing. Cut the tape to the appropriate shape, peel the wax paper off and stick your packing tape sticker to the space you want to your recipient to scratch.

Then mix your liquid acrylic paint with a drop of dish detergent and paint over the tape. Let it dry and voila, a scratch and win card.

If I could go back I think I would have worded the card "November 23rd, 2012 is my due date". As I worded it my parents discovered I was pregnant when they scratched the first circle, leaving the the last two circles to be scratched after congratulations  and hugs etc.. All of that said, it was an easy project. My parents loved it and it introduced our little one in a fun and lighthearted way.