Make your own scratch offs just like you find on lotto tickets. All it takes is a little planning, some clever screen printing, and a steady hand.
I love creating unique business cards . I've made them into flat pack vampire kits and used DIY embossing techniques . Not so long ago a friend of mine asked for some to promote his company Instinct Engineering . He'd just finished doing the engineering behind this massive awesome steampunk sculpture called the Raygun Gothic Rocket and wanted some cards showcasing it. I decided that it would be cool if you could scratch away the design plans to reveal the finished sculpture beneath.
At first I thought that it would be a pretty simple job, just assemble everything in Photoshop and hand it off to a printer. After getting quotes back from a few places (some over $1300) I was a bit flustered. I'd promised to make the project happen but couldn't believe how expensive it was to print. Then, I did a little research online. I found this project which gave me the idea: why not create my own scratch off ink and screenprint the cards myself? Then I could stamp them with the drawing on top and get them cut. By doing so much of the labor myself I could save my friend a mint in printing fees. Sufficed it was more work than I'd bargained for and ended up biting my teeth for a month waiting on printers, screenprinting, getting orders waylaid, and generally being tossed about on the choppy waters of fate but in the end I came up with some fantastic, beautiful, and pretty professional looking scratch cards.
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Signing UpStep 1: Design, Assemble, And Print
I chose to do a pretty complex project, here, with all the aligning, cutting, stamping, screening and everything needing to work out so precisely to make the cards work. It was a bit extreme and in retrospect I wish I'd allowed more room for error but the principle is pretty simple. You assemble your design in photoshop, creating separate layers for each of the elements. I made sure to add crop marks to my page so things could be aligned at Kinko's for cutting.
I saved the design for the front and back of the cards as high resolution jpegs. I sent those off to the printer to get printed on cardstock. I made a transparency for the scratch off design to get made into a screen (you can find out more about the process here).
When I first sent the design off to the printer's they messed up a bit of my order. The design got printed on plain paper instead of cardstock. After getting a refund I added all of my order information (4 color printing, front and back, cardstock, my name, my phone number) in the margins of the print to make sure they couldn't mess it up. I've had mixed luck with printing so make sure you are really specific about what you're ordering and be sure to call and make sure they get your order exactly right.
I saved the design for the front and back of the cards as high resolution jpegs. I sent those off to the printer to get printed on cardstock. I made a transparency for the scratch off design to get made into a screen (you can find out more about the process here).
When I first sent the design off to the printer's they messed up a bit of my order. The design got printed on plain paper instead of cardstock. After getting a refund I added all of my order information (4 color printing, front and back, cardstock, my name, my phone number) in the margins of the print to make sure they couldn't mess it up. I've had mixed luck with printing so make sure you are really specific about what you're ordering and be sure to call and make sure they get your order exactly right.
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Put you in my gift guide for guys! Just thought I'd let you know :)
Just a thought for stamping them in step 4...
I noticed you used had multiple single stamps pictured, glued to small pieces of wood.
If you're stamping entire sheets of the business cards, why not glue a grid of the stamps to a large piece of wood, and that way you can ink up like 12 stamps at once using a larger roller, and print an entire sheet at a time.... That way you only have to register the page to the plate, rather than each individual stamp... i imagine it would be considerably faster too...?
Anyways just a thought...
Really great looking product man, wish I had the money and an excuse to give ya some work... lol..
Question: What kind of dish detergent? Just a liquid dish soap like Palmolive or Dawn?
Any one of the fluorescent colored clear ones will do. I think I used Palmolive for these.
Inspir-Ible!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I'm sure your hard work and generosity will earn you many karma points.
Sincerely,
Marya
Awesome cool! And what a good friend you are for doing all that.
I suppose I haven't been constructive in a while (in terms of adding to instructables), this makes me want to make things! (really awesome easily-distributed things like business cards and give-aways, but things in general)
How come you decided to stamp the rocket instead of screen print it over the scratch-off ink?
Good question. The screen printing artist who helped me make the screens and print everything thought that the detail was just too small to get well on her equipment. I took her advice and went with the stamps which I knew could get the tiny lines.
Those business cards look awesome!