Card or flowers? - how about both!

Another commissioned card and this time I was asked to make a card for a friends mum who was retiring from work. She said she didn't want a cute image and I was instantly stuck!! I don't know why I keep taking orders for cards 'cos I always feel pressured when I'm making them..

I decided I would experiment! Not always a good idea!!! But I think this time it worked out!
I thought a bouquet of flowers might be nice on a card, made using the paper flowers I've been doing lately. So I pulled out my flower nesties, my retro flower punch and my tiny daisy punch - along with a truck load of brads and my Basic Grey Sugared paper pad and got going!

This is what I ended up with:

I edged each layer of the flowers with tattered rose distress inks (I love that name!) and added a few punched leaves - I got a work-out trying to get those beasties punched! I was pressing and pressing for ages with all my might and it wouldn't go through, so I put it on the floor and stood on it - after a bit of dancing around on it the leaves were eventually born! Beautiful they were too!
I also added a few bits of pink wire which I curled around my pokey tool - I got this idea from Rach's fabby blog when she curled the stems of little flowers - thanks for the tip!!
I didn't get a close up as the battery died in my camera as I was taking the pictures and I didn't have time to get it charged before the card was being collected.

For the paper wrapping, I marked the centre at the bottom of a piece of 6x6 dp and scored from there up to each corner and cut away most of the excess - just leaving enough to stick it to the card. When I stuck it to the card I left it so as it sat out from the card and when I attached the flowers I overlapped them on the edge (which I added a border beautified with a MSBP) so as the wrapper looked bubbly and 3d.

I made a tag with my label nesties and curled it a bit and attached it with foam pads for dimention.

This is the inside:

I also had to make a box to put it in - I didn't want all the flowers to get squished in an envelope!
Lined with tissue paper (which is looking a brighter and wrong shade of green)

So now I have to get stuck in to my friends wedding invitations - we got all the stuff ordered last night (it's nice to go shopping with someone else's credit card!!) including over 2000 tiny swarovski crystals which I need to stick each one individually!! Fun!