And all because the lady loves Milk Tray... Stampin' for the Weekend #6 & Papertake Challenge

I've gone ever so slightly over the top with my card for Stampin' for the Weekend's challenge :). The challenge for this week is Strawberries Dipped in Chocolate... yum. There have been quite a few pink/brown challenges, and very nice they are too, but this is a red and brown theme, slightly different. I'm putting it as a second entry to Papertake Weekly's Challenge, which I hope is allowed, it just fits their theme of My Favourite Things so well ;).

When I was looking at Dimension Fourth's stand at Newbury last week, I remembered that I'd bought a stamp set for a box of chocolates from them, having seen some wonderful artwork on their stand, but hadn't used the stamps. Now I can justify a mega stamp collection, but not one that sits unused :), so I decided to get to work with the set for this theme. There wasn't any artwork on the stand last week but I talked to the very helpful woman who was demoing on the stand who told me about a mocked up box of chocolates and how it had been put together. So this is my take on the theme:

Detail:
I found two different sheets of brown pearlescent card and some pink pearlescent card to stamp my chocolates onto. I embossed all of the chocolates to give them a realistic look. I don't have any brown embossing ink or powder, but I found that, if I worked fast, I could emboss my Memento dye ink with clear powder and get the effect I was looking for. I've never tried this before, I'm so happy it works, gives me a lot more colours I can heat emboss now!

The chocolate box itself is gold embossed onto Bazzil card; it's hard to see all the lovely detail in the stamp as I've given it a lid with an acetate centre. This is the first time I've stamped onto acetate, in fact it's the first time I've ever used it on a card. I started with a box lid with "Thanks" stamped on it, but when my elder son came home from work late last night he claimed the card for a birthday party this evening. I tried to remove the acetate from the first lid to change it over and noticed that it had smudged even after a long drying time. So this lid was stamped around midnight, with "Happy Birthday" and left overnight to dry thoroughly. I don't think the midnight bit's too important, but the long drying time certainly is :).

Inside:
The chocolates are all mounted onto foam pads, I've used a double layer of foam pads around the box lid to make it stand out. The card is made from the same Bazzil card as the box and I've trimmed an inch from the RH side to use my new punch that I got at Newbury last week. It's a Woodware punch, about 1/5th the cost of the Martha Stewart punch I intended to buy; I have no problem buying expensive stamps but I can be such a miser when it comes to other craft stuff :). The papers come from Craftwork Cards, as does the brown greeting button. For the first time in ages I've used peel-offs, on the box lid. They just looked right...

Inside the card I've added more chocolate (you can never have too much chocolate, right?) and the greeting. Oh, both sentiments are Elusive Images. It's going to be difficult to let this card go, it's different from anything I've done before. It was a lot of work, but I think it's worth it :).