Joan's Challenge Garden Theme

Good Morning Ladies,
Happy Mother's Day! I got up this morning and finished up my card for the Joan's Challenge Garden Theme.
You can enjoy and join us in this challenge. Just click on this link. http://www.atjoansgardens.com/2012/05/this-weeks-challenge_10.html
The challenge this week I found to be quite a challenge. Here are requirements for the challenge....
Use a garden theme
Use a sentiment
Make a flower using micro beads or flower soft for the center
Use an embossed background
The challenge for me was to create a flower using flower soft or micro beads for the center. I have two colors of flower soft that I could locate. One was sand and the other koala grey. I wanted to use flower soft so these were the colors I had to work with. My other challenge was to create a flower I had not created before. So I spent quite a bit of time watching flower making tutorials on You Tube. I'm gonna tell you there are a lot of them on there.
Here is my challenge card....

 I started out making the flower first. This flower is created using coffee pot filters. I die cut two sizes of circle scallops from coffee filters using a spellbinders die set. I sprayed the cut shapes with Tim Holtz color wash. I then used my heat gun to dry them. They start to curl on their own. I put them together with a brad in the center. I filled the center with glue and added the Koala flower soft to the center. I let this dry over night. I then scrunched the petals to make a puffy flower. I thought the bears with the flower pot were the perfect garden theme. Always with the animals...LOL. My bear scene is colorized with Prisma pencil, Gamsol, and Spica pens. I added my friends sentiment cut with a spellbinders die set. For the embossed background I used a sizzix embossing folder. The very back background paper is from Graphics 45. It is the Curiosity Shoppe colllection. My friend Judy picked this up for me at Joan's. I had ordered it and I love it. I wanted to put it to use right away.

 This is the inside of my card.

A photo of just the flower. I like this flower and will be making more. Thanks Joan and Selma for another great challenge that pushed me to a new level.
Happy Scraps,
Mrs. Swandog