Scratch Your Travels United States of America (USA US) Watercolor Art Map 12x18in Poster

This map is great. If you’ve read the negative reviews, hear me out-First, when my map arrived and I opened it, there was a scratch across Texas. Not a huge deal as I’ve been there and would be a scratching it anyway, but it went into the boarder. Requested a return and replacement, new one arrived no problem and looked good. Which brings me to my second point.If you read the directions, it clearly states to leave the gold border around the outsides of the states. So anyone complaining about it not coming off clean - it’s because it’s suppose to stay on there. It WILL come off, but not the same way the other parts do. For the time being, I’m leaving the boarder on (per directions).Another complaint I’ve seen a few times is about the white showing through under the states and near the boarders, and the text not looking complete... It’s a watercolor map. Meaning it’s designed as a watercolor map. Watercolor does not always flow to your point of interest perfectly. I think it’s a beautiful look having a little of the white showing because from afar it makes it look like a real watercolor. It’s great! If you look at photos posted by others, you can see IN EVERY ONE that the white spots are identical. It’s not a flaw in the work, it’s intentional. Same goes for the text. It’s a font choice. It’s stylized. It’s suppose to look that way. Its not a flaw, or poor quality, it’s intentional!And finally, here are some tips about scratching it. I first tried the suggested way - to use the eraser end of a pencil. That did very little, and was a weird suggestion. I tried a dime, which worked well but was taking awhile (had a lot to scratch) so I decided to use a quarter. Believe it or not the dime was better! Maybe because it WAS smaller, or lighter, I’m not sure, but either way it did the job. I saw someone suggested a guitar pick. I may try that to get into the right corners! Just go slow and take your time. You don’t need a lot of pressure, just patience. It’s also easier to scratch if it’s completely flat. It’s suggested not to get these kind of posters dry mounted, but they make self adhesive foam board which works the same. Keeps it nice and flat, and ready to frame (if you want). Since it’s already attached to foam board, I plan to frame it without glass. That way I can easily take it off the wall and scratch a state whenever I need to!Hope this was helpful to at least someone!

I was worried it would be really low quality but I was pleasantly surprised. It came rolled up in a tube which was kind of annoying because it was hard to lay flat, but that's how paper ships, so what can ya do...When I was waiting for it to ship, I started to wonder exactly how the map is printed. Would I have to be careful not to scratch away the map under the scratch material like I do with lotto cards?What is really cool about the scratch off material is that there is a printed map on the poster paper, then on top of that is the scratching material, and then on top of that is another map, so you don't have to be careful not to scratch away the map lines!The map comes on thick white poster paper so it is shiny. Since the map is shiny you can wipe the scratched off flakes with a damp cloth and have a nice, clean map.The map doesn't come with a frame. I added a picture of my map, which I put in a frame over some corkboard and use to collect pins from traveling to each state. I love my map!My mom tells me she wants one every time she comes to my house ;)

I bought this almost a year ago. At first the scratch off came off perfectly, and I had no issues. The past few months I have tried to scratch off more states and it is a pain! It takes so long to get the gold color off, the paper is now stained with this gold/brown when I try to scratch off. In fact it's so hard to get the gold color off that the paper ends up ripping.The actual map ends up looking so ugly because of it :(Unfortunately, I am not happy with this product and would not recommend if you are planning to scratch off states a few months after you buy it.

I was skeptical about this item given the mixed reviews. However, I have never ordered anything from Prime that turned out to be very poor quality and it was the only scratch off map I could find in this size, which I needed to fit where I wanted to hang it, so I figured I would give it a chance and hope for the best. However, when the map arrived I could not believe how cheaply made and poor the quality actually was. I was extremely careful when scratching off my states and even got a guitar pick to do so I could be more detailed and get into smaller areas than if I used a coin as recommended. I assumed that the white spots that were being reported in some of the reviews must be from scratching too hard. However, they are not. I scratched off four states and all four had extremely obvious white spots in the water color underneath. The spots are smooth and unavoidable. They are not from careless scratching but flaws in the water color itself. Additionally, the state names do not scratch off at all like other comparable maps. Therefore, you have to scratch around them. This leads to parts of the state names getting scratched off or being unable to get all the foil around the state names off no matter how carefully you scratch. I bought this to hang on my wall and despite how careful I was, there was absolutely no way I would hang this because the quality was so poor and it looked cheap no matter what I did. I have never returned anything to Amazon because I was unhappy with the quality of the product, but I already mailed this back and ordered a different one. This map is absolutely not worth the money (I would say no more that $10 for how poorly made it is) and I would 100% recommend going with a different brand. I love the concept but the quality is lacking so severely that I still can't believe that Amazon Prime actually sells this product. I have never written a review this negative before but I felt that I should since I was so unhappy with the product and hope that it will be helpful to allow others to avoid the hastle of having to return this product.