My family and I have been playing Curse of the Dark, an "escape-room" style board game. We recently reached the halfway point, where they recommend taking a break--it's supposed to be two 90-minute play sessions (spoiler: we are on month 6).

Included with the box is an answer sheet, which include scratch-off hints. (You might also be familiar with them from lottery tickets.) You scratch off the grey stuff with a penny, and underneath is the hint. I idly wondered if you could do that yourself.

I found several people online repeating this recipe:

• 2 parts silver acrylic paint (I used 5 parts white, 1 part black)
• 1 part dish soap

They recommended 2-4 layers to make it opaque. I gave it a try.

So visually it looked pretty good. But scratchable, not so much. It was hard to get off, and the paper tore when I scratched harder.

Randomona did some experimentation, and had better luck with all types of paint. Turns out it works way better if you add a layer of plastic, such as tape, rather than applying to paint directly to paper or cardstock. This makes sense since the stickers are basically a thin layer of something on tape. And sure enough, when I looked at the 2-3 other tutorials I read, they all said to apply tape first. Whoops!

I would discover this only later, pictures are later in the post

I decided to give "the reveal" a try with small square post-it notes (50x50 mm, about 2x2 inch).

These were okay. But

• not many fit on a page
• post-its aren't very fun to take off
• sometimes I had to use two notes, or you could see through
• my local store doesn't sell the full-sticky post-its, so you can peek if you really wanted. (I'm not sure if they still make full-sticky, and I don't think they ever did in mini size)

By the way, you can print your own using my bad generator. If you want less than 15, just leave some boxes blank and don't cover them with a post-it.

Next up, I bought some! They sell premade scratch-off stickers. They are available in 50x50 mm, but I went half that size--I'd rather have more on a page.

Mine came in a roll of 1000 stickers for $10 (that's 1 cent per sticker). You can get circles or squares--I picked squares.

Here you can see my scratch-off chores card. It was a lot more fun. I wrote a better second generator you can use to print your own. Up to 88 can fit on a page, and it will shrink the grid if you have less.

Finally, I tried the homemade acrylic paint method a try, with tape this time.

I'd say the stickers scratch off best, followed by the recipe mentioned on tape. I tried more dish soap and no dish soap, and they were both worse. I suspect less dish soap would work better.

You can write on the stickers fine, or the acrylic, but the dish soap recipes scratch off if you try to use a pen on top.