Anybody who knows anything about Santa Claus knows that he’s got an eye on us all these days. As any small child will tell you, Santa knows who is being naughty and who is being nice. But if the people in your life need a little reminding (or if you just want to have some fun), check this out. I made a notepad full of cute little “Naughty” and “Nice” tickets that I can easily tear off and hand out to anyone who needs one!

So how do you use these tickets? Well, you may come up with your own ideas, but here are my two favorite ways:

1. As incentives for kids: When your kids are acting up, a “Naughty ticket” is a sure-fire way to remind them, in a tangible way, that Santa is watching. And when they ARE behaving, a “Nice ticket” is such a wonderful way to let them know they’re being good.

2. To strangers you meet: You know how crazy and rushed the stores and streets are right now with all the shopping frenzy? And how a kind gesture from a stranger can really make your day? Well, the next time you get good service in a store, or someone helps you with a door, or you get a warm holiday greeting from a stranger, reward that person with a “Nice ticket”. I guarantee you will cheer yourself up as much as you do them. I do NOT recommend handing out “Naughty” tickets to strangers, though. You’ll just ruin everyone’s day! But keep the “Naughty” tickets with you, for humor’s sake. They make the “Nice” tickets funnier, and “Nice” folks will think they are a riot.

These little tickets are super easy to make. To start, download our template and print it out a few times.

Download our Naughty and Nice Ticket Template (PDF)

Then use a paper trimmer or scissors to cut out the tickets.

You could stop there, but I think these are a million times cooler if you make a little notepad out of them. It’s easy to do with the padding compound we sell in our store.

In addition to the padding compound, you’ll need a small paint brush, two binder clips, and two scraps of cardboard (which just so happen to be all the items found in our padding compound kits).

To start the notepad, first stack up all the “Naughty” tickets in one pile, and the “Nice” tickets in another. Put the two stacks back to back. Then tap the stack on the table, top edge down, to line all the pieces up and get a perfectly smooth top.

From here, we’re going to use the same steps we’ve shown you before in our tutorial on making custom notepads. Take the two pieces of cardboard and put one on each side of the stack of tickets. This will help keep them straight and stable during the gluing step. Then tap the entire stack on the table again, top side down.

Now put one binder clip on each side of the stack, to hold it in place. Then flip it so that the top of the tickets is on top, and apply a thick coat of padding compound all along the edge, which should be nice and flat from your tapping.

It’ll dry in 15-30 minutes, and you can apply a second coat if you wish. Here’s what it looks like when dried. This pad was made with 5 copies of the template, which gave me 40 tickets. You can use more or fewer as you see fit.

Now you can just tear off a ticket from either side of the pad when you need to play Santa!

These pads are small enough to easily tuck in a pocket or purse, which makes them really easy to use. If you make some, we would love to hear the reactions you get from handing them out, so please let us know in the comments!