gailambrosius – Super Awesome Stamper

We had a nice time at our weekend retreat. Lots of projects completed, good food and pillow gifts! I’ll share the pillow gifts in this post and the rest of the weekend photos in a second post.

We had a lunch date with my nephew at Texas Tubb’s Taco Palace on February 16th which is within walking distance of the Gail Ambrosius chocolate shop. We arrived early in the area so decided to stop in the shop. They have the best chocolate covered caramels so that was what I was thinking of purchasing.

But, the heart boxes full of assorted chocolates were on sale since it was a few days after valentine’s day. So I took the opportunity to provide retreat guests with a fancy chocolate and that chocolate needed a fancy box. So I created one!

The stamp set is Better Than Chocolate, the patterned paper is from the Coffee Break package all complimented with early espresso ink, cardstock and seam binding ribbon.

See how to create the box wrap and decorate the top in my how to video.

Would you like to attend a future retreat? The next dates at Cattail Retreat in Poynette are August 24-26, 2018 and October 19-21, 2018. You get your own table to spread out your favorite craft, help with one meal and enjoy the scenic pond view outside the craft room. Contact me for full details and to reserve your spot.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Super Awesome Retreat Coordinator Shirley

#gailambrosius #madisonchocolate #weekendretreat #pillowgiftschangeeverytime

The word chocolate can be a noun or adjective. This chocolate is so luscious. The cake has chocolatey frosting. I love dark chocolate! Just a few ways the word can be used to convey meaning.

My More Than Chocolate hand stamped greeting card will make you want to seek out your nearest chocolatier shop. A local shop, Chocolate Caper, just opened a second location in my town. Their chocolate is luscious. Another favorite is Gail Ambrosius on Atwood Ave. I love Gail’s dark chocolate with caramel inside! Chocolaterian has yummy chocolatey frosting on their Badger Bites.

My card today was inspired Twila Davis’ Sale-A-Bration blog hop entry. See her star design here with the spiral inside. If you missed our hop with 15 stops, hop along here.

I had window sheets in stock and thought this material would make a good spiral base. So I used the largest circle framelit from the Layering Circles collection to cut a circle of window sheet. I used a paper snips to custom cut the spiral.

The stamped chocolate pieces helped with reducing the scrap pile so that is a bonus! Each mini chocolate is attached to the window sheet spiral with a glue dot. I used the 1 inch circle punch to punch whisper white. This circle was used to cover up the adhesive keeping the spiral attached to the inside of the card directly below the score line. I cleverly covered the glue dot attaching the other end of spiral to the top of the card with another stamped mini chocolate.

inside of the card…

outside of the card…The gold doilie just retired so hopefully you still have a few in your stash.

Supplies used…You can see my work surface which is a large desk blotter. I turn the calendar pages over after the month is done and use it to pre-clean my stamps before I clean them with my stampin scrub and stampin mist. If you have been following my CASEing series, you will see the doggie test run towards the bottom and then faint images from pre-cleaning stamps in the corners.

Our valentine designer series paper this year is Painted with Love Specialty. It features gold throughout the collection with melon mambo, rich razzleberry and peek-a-book peach combinations. A nice change from real red images.

Thanks for stamping with me today!

The Sale-A-Bration brochure is online at my store here. Customers, hosts and new recruits are rewarded for ordering, party sales and signing up to be a demonstrator on my Super Awesome Stampers team. Check out the brochure and then contact me if you have questions about ordering, hosting or being a demonstrator.

Thanks for stamping with me today. Have a nice weekend!

Super Awesome Stamper Shirley

I did a Facebook Live today sharing how to make the swirl pop up. I was able to publish it to Youtube so can share it on my blog here. HTH and thanks for watching!