Sweet Chocolates - New Products

Jan 25

I ordered some new supplies recently, and have a few cards to share as I start using them. Here’s one!

I recently received some new Concord & 9th stamps, stencils, and dies that I ordered. (From their December and January releases.)

I knew I had some birthday cards to make, and for this one decided to use some of the candy dies in Sweet on You to make some chocolates. I thought it would be fun to represent the idea of having them in a box without having to mail an actual box, so a window card might work as an alternate approach.

The background of the card panel is done with Oceanside ink on Oceanside cardstock, using the Deco Stencils. (I wanted a subtle effect so the focus would be on the chocolates.) I actually tried a more bold background first, using the same stencil and some pastes, that was too much for this card. You’ll see it show up on another card soon.)

I used an arch-shaped die (because it coordinates with the stencil pattern so well) to cut a window in the panel, and moved on to the chocolates.

The chocolates themselves are made entirely with one color! I used cardstock and ink, and achieved the darker brown for the dark chocolates, as well as some shading, by using a blending brush to add ink onto the cardstock.

For the box of chocolates idea, I wanted some sort of representation of the papers the chocolates are often in… I found a flower die in my collection that I thought would work well enough. (There are actually two sizes of it in the Triple-Step Floral Frame Stamp Set - to cut out the chrysanthemum stamps.) The smaller flower die worked just right for the smaller chocolates.

For the larger one I wanted a “paper” that was more narrow, so I cut out the flower die, then shifted the die over (using the side that was less rounded) to cut off one side more. You can see it in the middle of this image. Once the “papers” were cut out, I turned them over so the cut side (that we usually think of as the front) was down. In this case, I liked the edge that is created by the die - it was more of a physical representation of the candy papers than the smooth curved side of the paper pieces we usually prefer to see. I used a small blending brush and inked in the center of each of these white “paper” shapes with some Pebble ink, just to add a little bit of shading dimension.

The large “sweet” letters are from the Pop Heart Dies set, but I had to get creative and cut a couple of them down to make the “w” (using the “m”) and “t” (from the “L” and the “+”).