A Dahlia for Retirement

There is a long-time employee retiring from our department at the end of the week. I already made my personal card from me to her here but now my department has asked me to make a card for all of us to sign.  They don't usually ask for cards like this - but in this case, she is all about her dahlias and they knew I could find a way to add a dahlia to the card.

This is a 5x7 card. That's not my normal size so I struggled a bit but I needed space on the inside for 16 people to sign it.  It probably needed to be bigger but they'll just have to write small!

I did have to go shopping for the requested dahlia and I found this gorgeous die from Gina K which, had I noticed it earlier, would already have been in my collection.  I don't know much about dahlias so I googled images.  Apparently the most common is a red, but I saw yellow ones with orange centers and they were just so cheerful that I used that color scheme for the card.

I had different butterflies in mind but I could not find my favorites. That frustrates me so much because I believe I am hyper-organized, or maybe it's just I love the act of getting organized. They were definitely not with my other butterflies. I even flipped through my entire stash of flower dies in case they were misfiled there - nope.  They are misfiled somewhere (hopefully not accidentally in the garbage can at some point in the past) and I hope they turn up.  So I'm not totally in love with what I used - but I wanted it to be more graphic than realistic and I wanted them to have a die for the body so I could add a bit of black - and this is what I had.

SUPPLY LIST

Stamps: Waffle Flower Happy Retirement and dies

Dies: Gina K Designs Dahlia Flower Cover Plate, Birch Press Simple Butterfly Contour Layers

Cardstock: Stampin' Up Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight and Crumb Cake

Other: Gina K Designs Lattice Embossing Folder