Roll me in fairy dust...

So, we won't mention the stash diet. Naughty Clearly Besotted had their new release on 1st August and a couple (okay four) of the fab new sets fell into my basket. I was suprised, but happy to find that they arrived the very next day. After stroking them for a couple of hours, I just had to ink up one of the cute platypus (platypuses?).

As I wasn't in the mood for colouring I decided to paper piece the platypus. To make the card base I used the left over bit of blue card and then trimmed down a 5x7 card blank to fit it. I then created a smaller white panel to sit on top of the blue. Before gluing it in place I stamped the sentiment from a Woodware set and die cut the MFT Peekaboo square.

Using the square from the die cut I inked some clouds using the MFT cloud stencil and some versamark chalk ink. I normally use a mini blending tool to do this, but in an uncharacteristic moment of tidiness had thrown them all into the washing machine on a cold wash. This however gave me the chance to try out my Rare Earth ink dusters, that had been sat in the packet since Crafting Live at Bolton. If you've not seen these before they are similar to the brushes that Clarity sell, but in miniature. The bristles are super soft and so I spent a while stroking them to start with! I found that they allowed me to apply a much lighter layer of ink and build it up as opposed to my tendency to be heavy handed with the mini blender tool. Their small size makes them easy to hold and allows you to be more in control of where you are putting the ink. In my opinion, definitely a good buy.

To finish the card I glued the square back into place and then added the platypus on foam tape. I added stickles to the tail, belt and unicorn horn and glossy accents to his (or her) bill. 

I'm taking this card over to the Snippets Playground as I raided the bit box to paper piece the platypus. Hope the roof on the treehouse is watertight!