I purchased the Enduring Beauty bundle early this year when it came out in the January – April mini catalog. I’ve seen other companies offer stamp/die/stencil bundles for a while now and I was super-excited that Stampin’ Up! joined the party. I think it is a great trio offering that offers a lot of versatility. You can use the stamps and dies and color using Stampin’ Blends or watercolor techniques. Or you can use the stencils and dies without the stamps to have a slightly softer look. Or you could skip the dies and have the pretty flowers on a rectangular layer. For my card I used all three to create the floral spray on this card. I love how it turned out!

I do have a tip for using the stencils. I think that they work best when you use two tones of the same color. I first tried doing a combination of yellow and pink and it just looked off. You can see pictures below of the two color schemes that I tried. The highlighting stencil seems to be about creating shading and shadows, and it doesn’t look quite right (at least to me) when I tried to create a two-color bloom.

Daffodil Delight with Flirty Flamingo
Pretty in Pink with Flirty Flamingo

As I said I love this bundle and I can’t wait to create more with it. The stencils are super-easy to line up with the stamped images and they make it very quick to color the flowers and leaves. Of course, if coloring is your jam then these flowers are great for that, too. Today I was more interested in speed and I’m very happy with how these turned out.

This sketch was the inspiration for my card design. Instead of having a separate panel on the right I instead used a single sheet of patterned paper and used the gold trim to create the look of the two sections. This sketch seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally use the Enduring Beauty bundle.

Another thing that I want to point out is that I used the black Pearlized Enamel Effects Basics to make the center of the flowers pop a bit more. These liquid embellishments are an easy way to add a little something extra to a card. I encourage you to check them out!

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