a chocolatey birthday...Stampin' UP! style

The love and best friend of my life is going to have his 35th birthday coming up very soon! Naturally, I had to put together a thoughtful gift for him.

My husband is a simple man. He doesn't want much and would be content with nothing for his birthday, but I would like to give him at least a little something to let him know that I'm thinking of him.

One thing that I know that will always make my husband happy is chocolate.......but then again, who doesn't get happy with chocolate?! This little box is stuffed FULL of chocolates.......

 Anywho, I decided to create this...

It's a 4" square box with a matching 3"x3" card. 

If you haven't guessed where I got my color inspirations from already, then let me show you...

 YES! my husband is going to LOVE it, I just know it!

My tips:

• sometimes you need to look at the gift you are giving your birthday boy/girl for color inspirations! In my case, it was a Hershey's chocolate bar: smoky slate, early espresso, and very vanilla.
• the 4" square box was actually made with a non-SU! punch board. The punch board is from We R memory keepers; gift box punch board. 
•  the circle window in the front of the box was cut by hand which created a not-so-pretty edge. I covered up the edge with a 3" circle and punched out 2 1/2" from the center with my circle punch.
• the ticket punch was shorter than the sentiment (yippee-skippe) I wanted to use so I, 1) cropped the width of the paper to fit slightly smaller than the width of the ticket  2) stamped the sentiment onto the cardstock 2) punched 1 edge of the ticket at a time by slipping it in as shown below then punching.

• for the 3"x3" card: the banner is actually a belly band! I thought this was pretty clever...lol. All you do is create a belly band like you normally would (make sure it's slightly smaller than the banner), then attach the banner to the front with some adhesive.
• trim very thin pieces of cardstock to create the vertical stripes on the right side of the card.

Supplies used:

• carstock: early espresso, smoky slate, very vanilla
• ink: early espresso smoky slate, versamark (for polka-dot background)
• stamps: yippee skippee, designer typeset (photopolymer), happy watercolor (polka-dot for background)
•  punches: ticket duo, 2 1/2" circle

 Thanks for stopping by! If you every have any questions or comments, I am always available!

Until next time...