Spain: The Reveal

Mom and I decided to surprise Dad with a trip for his birthday. So after some research we decided to make it Spain since none of us had been yet. Open jaw into Barcelona for 3 days, puddle hopper flight to Granada to see the Alhambra for 1 day, and then off to Madrid for 3 days. With the itinerary set, the tickets for the 3 airplane legs purchased and the hotels reserved, my thoughts turned to the trip reveal. Since we were arriving in Barcelona on dad’s birthday, the reveal would have to be earlier than his birthday.

What to do? What to do?

Being a very visual person, I started collecting images of quintessential Spanish things. I started with the landmarks, the flag, a flamenco dancer and two Spanish artists Picasso and Goya. For Picasso, I chose the Guernica and for Goya I chose a portrait of his uncle. And while those my seem a bit esoteric for most people, since my parents own a framing store, these were images are very familiar to both of them.

I knew I wanted to do some sort of build for a reveal rather than a big bang. So at first I thought of mailing dad an image a day. But that was iffy. Monday’s would have to be sent Saturday? Would Tuesday’s get there if I sent it Monday? If dad guessed it on Tuesday, would it be early enough to stop Wednesday’s from going out? And most importantly, how much was postage nowadays?

That’s when I saw Mitsy’s post at Artmind on how to make scratch off lottery tickets. And an idea formed…a scratch off birthday card!

I decided to make a double sided 5×7 card with the images as scratch off guessing tiles.

I mixed the acrylic and dishsoap and made a test scratch off to see if it worked. Initially I used the red template as a frame thinking that it would make nice neat silver boxes. Well the acrylic liked the paper more than the plastic and peeled off with the template. Next time, I might score the boxes and then try to peel the paper. This time I decided to just paint the plastic and cut another red frame out and use it as a frame.

The final card came together so beautifully. I could barely contain myself through dinner before I handed the card over to dad.

And dad had a ton of fun guessing what it was. For the curious people, he scratched off the Picasso and Goya first and guessed Spain.

Monday, October 26th, 2009 | 6:47 pm | arts and crafts, entertainment, food, good things, knitting, technology
| RSS 2.0