If you don’t have the Avant Garden stamp set yet, I strongly recommend that you put it on the top of your list.  It is one of the Sale-a-Bration stamp sets that are available for free when you have a purchase of $50.  Trust me – You will love this set!  It has helped me live up to the Stamped Greetings theme – One stamp set, Three designs, Endless possibilities.

Earlier this week, I posted an Avant Garden card that you can see here.  I had such a great time using the Avant Garden stamps and the Watercolor pencils that I decided to make some modifications to the initial design.  Below is a picture of the second card using this stamp set.  I hope you’ll agree that it really sparkles!

The changes that I made to my original card include:

• Stamping on Designer Series Paper (DSP) and then coloring – What a fun way to add a great background to your colored image!  The colors in the DSP work incredibly well with the colors used for the flowers.  The Watercolor Pencils are currently not able to be ordered.  They have been incredibly popular.  I’ll keep you updated about their availability.  Hopefully – they will be available again in February.  In the meantime, use your choice of ink colors and the blender pens to color your flowers.  The results are also gorgeous!
• Falling Petals Textured Touch – I love embossing folders.  They are incredibly easy and quick to use and add a wonderful lift to a card.  Check out the new Falling Petals Textured Embossing Folder from the Occasions catalog.
• Sparkle from Wink of Stella – Look closely at the black ovals.  They have a wonderful layer of clear Wink of Stella!  The silver Wink of Stella pen was used to add some random sparkle to the front of the card.  The random dots were made using by flicking the pen onto the card.
• Stitched Shapes Framelits Dies add a unique touch – The “Happy Birthday Wishes” sentiments are add a finish to the inside of the card.  The Stitched Shapes Framelits dies were used to cut and frame the oval on the front of the card!

• Casual Elegance of Pearls – I hope you agree that the pearls add the perfect finishing touch.  Remember – Use an odd number of pearls (or other embellishments like sequins) on pieces of your work to add visual interest.

The most important thing that I “added” to this card was experimenting!  I recently watched a video and was inspired by three very well known stampers who gave the advice of jumping in and trying something new with paper and ink.  You’re not always going to love (or even like) the results – but, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised when a card turns out even better than you had hoped.  That is exactly what happened when I started to work through the design of this card.

Check back tomorrow to see the third design with the Avant Garden stamp set.  Remember – One stamp set, Three designs, Endless possibilities.

Happy stamping!
Laurie

Below are the key products that I used to create the Avant Garden card in this post.  Click on any picture, and you’ll go to my on-line store.