DIY Invisible Letter Card for Valentine's day

I always wanted to try different interactive cards for all occasions. If you are a regular follower here, you probably might have read my snowman pull up card for Christmas. This time it is an invisible ink letter card. There are many ways to create invisible ink at home and you would have probably tried most of them in your science class. I tried almost all the ways and finally settled with crayon and marker pen to make this card. I will discuss why later in this post. Now let's start with the supplies list.

Materials Required :
One 8" X 11.5" white cardstock for the card
Patterned cardstock for envelope
Colorful scrapbook papers for hearts
One white Copy paper
White crayon
Any color marker of your choice
Glue stick or double-sided adhesive
Scissors
Ruler and pencil

Step 1: Fold the white cardstock into half for the base. Draw the envelope template on the patterned cardstock and cut it. I just used a ruler and pencil to draw the envelope template.

Step 2: Fold the envelope template and glue it to form the envelope. Glue the envelope to the cardstock base with top flap open.

Step 3: Draw and cut some hearts from colorful scrapbook papers and stick it on the cardstock base so that it covers the envelope flap.Also write "With lots of love" sentiment or any other sentiment of your choice using marker or use stickers. I used my electronic cutting machine to cut the hearts and words. 

Step 4: Now comes the interesting part, the invisible ink letter. In this step, you are going to write an invisible letter to your love and place it inside the envelope you just made. 

Ways to make invisible ink at home

There are many ways of making invisible ink at home. I tried four ways to make them. Here are the results of each method.

First: Use lemon juice to write and show the paper over any heat source to see the words written. I used a candle to see the words written. It took a long time to carefully heat the paper above the candle and also I accidentally burnt the paper(You can see the result in the picture below) twice while experimenting. So, I thought this is not a good idea.

Second: Use baking soda mixed with water to write the words and use a paintbrush and grape juice to read the words. As I didn't have grape juice in hand I used vinegar with red food coloring. The letters did show up but were not so legible.

Third: Use lemon juice to write and heat the paper in the oven at 350F for ten minutes to make the letters show up. But again the result was not clearly visible.

Four: Use a white crayon to write the words and to reveal the words shade using a marker on the top of the words. I found this method worked perfectly because I thought I had more control while writing with crayon compared to using a paintbrush and also found shading with a marker was fun compared to heating the paper and painting with grape juice. Also, crayons and markers are found almost in every home and even if it is not, I got around 5 markers for $1 in dollar tree. 

Here are some other methods you can try: 

1) Try this method of invisible ink using baking soda and water mixture for writing and turmeric and rubbing alcohol mixture for revealing. You can get more info from Research Parent. 

2) You can use an Invisible marker pen to write and a UV light to see the hidden message 

Finally, I chose white crayons for my invisible ink. Write whatever you wish in white crayon in the copy paper, I drew two hearts on either side of the sentence so that it will be easy for the recipient to know where to shade. 

Step 5: Fold the copy paper and insert it inside the envelope. Attach a marker along with the card. I used sticker paper to cover the marker(Because It was ninja turtle themed markers :P) You can also leave a small note on how to shade the invisible letter to reveal the actual words inside the card and that's it. Your invisible letter card is ready. 

Here is how the invisible letter looks after shading with a marker. (This is a love poem from google search, just saying! :P)It is not very clear in the picture compared to seeing in person, but when you use a dark-colored marker like brown(see below) you can see the message clearly. 

Another version of the invisible letter:

Instead of a card you can also make just the letter and present it in a cute way using just a couple of popsicle sticks. Here is how, 

Materials used:

Two popsicle sticks

Double-sided tape / glue stick

Scissors

Ribbon

Any white paper of your choice

White crayon

A dark-colored marker to reveal the message. 

Step 1: Cut a paper to the size that will fit the popsicle sticks. Glue one end of the popsicle stick to one side of the paper. 

Step 2: Fold the paper in accordion fold using the popsicle stick as the guide and then trim if any excess paper and glue the end to another popsicle stick. 

Step 3: Use a white crayon to write the secret message and a normal black pen to write a line below to let the recipient know that you have to shade the top part to reveal the message. 

Here is the reveal of the message after shading. How Fun!

Hope you like these simple ways of creating a secret message letter/card. This will be a perfect little DIY gift to include in your child's goodies bag for valentine's day. Kids will have fun scribbling using a marker to reveal the secret message. Share your comments below. As always I would love to read them .