Scratch Art Christmas Cards

Kids love to be involved in Christmas festivities. A fun way for kids to help with holiday preparations is to make Christmas cards for relatives and friends. 

Today, I’m going to show you how kids of all ages can use a really cool art technique called scratch art to make your family’s cards for the holiday season.

Scratch art is one of those classic art techniques that you may remember from your own school days. Young children find the process quite magical and older kids are always mesmerized by it. You may even want to make a few cards yourself, because the process is so much fun!

Let’s gather our supplies and I’ll show you how it’s done.

You Will Need:

• white card stock (or poster paperboard or cardboard)
• brightly coloured crayons
• black tempera paint or poster paint
• craft stick or wooden skewer
• coloured card stock
• glue
• craft jewels (optional)

Instructions:

1. Cut a Christmas tree shape out of card stock or poster board. A simple triangle will do.

2. Have your child colour the entire surface of the tree with crayons. Make stripes and blocks of colours, mixing the colours up as you go.

Choose bright colours like lime green, orange, turquoise and yellow so they’ll really pop in contrast with the black paint.

3. When the tree has been completely coloured, your child can give it a coat of black tempera paint. Brush the paint over the crayon wax until all of the colouring has been blacked out. Allow the paint to dry.

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4. Now it’s time to scratch some art!

With a craft stick or skewer, have your child “decorate” his or her tree. Using the craft sticks as pencils, we scratched Christmas lights and garlands into the black paint.

Magically, the crayon colours are revealed as you scratch away the paint. 

I love this process because children of all ages can produce beautiful results. A toddler’s scribbles will be vibrant and lovely, while an older child can work on detailed, colourful designs.

5. Glue the finished tree onto a piece of folded card stock, lining up one edge of the tree with the fold.  Then cut around the tree, leaving a border all the way around.

We topped each of our trees with a sparkly craft gem, but this step is optional.

Have your child finish by writing a message across the bottom of the card.