“Just… Peel, Sprinkle, Tap.”
In the mid-1960s, Hasbro released a line of art sets that combined the precision of paint-by-numbers with the texture of velvet flocking powder, aka Stardust.
Each “new Touch of Velvet Art” set came with two pictures, six tubes of multi-coloured flocking, one feather, one peel-off stick, and a colour guide. Each picture was divided into numbered sections corresponding to colours to be painted into each section. Colours were applied from darkest to lightest with all of one colour applied before starting another.
To apply Stardust, junior artists used the peel-off stick to remove one of the sections of the picture, revealing a sticky area below. Flocking was sprinkled from the appropriate tube until the entire area was covered. The supplied feather acted as a mini broom, allowing excess flocking to be whisked away. The process was repeated until all colour areas were filled in. The final product was a fuzzy looking picture that was soft to the touch.
Hasbro released numerous Stardust art sets that featured many popular characters from TV and cartoons, including Batman and Robin, Bonanza, Flipper, Mary Poppins, Mickey Mouse, The Green Hornet, The Munsters, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Zorro.
Before the line disappeared, the company mixed things up a bit, swapping out the two pictures for a much larger (12-inch x 16-inch), more abstract option and more than doubling the amount of Stardust from six to 13 tubes.
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