Lilacs for Lucy

I can't believe it has been almost an entire month since I posted anything!  I am not sure what happened in there, I guess life happened.  I took some time in there to make my daughter's 1st birthday invitations (I will post these after this weekend...hopefully with pictures of her cake!) and then we had a rough week this past week...more on that later.  Before I go there, I will cover the card.

Finally getting back in to the Mojo Monday Sketch Challenges (bummed I missed a contest week in there, but oh well), so I used Mojo Sketch #86 for this card that was completely inspired by my beautiful blooming Lilac bush in my yard.  I love lilacs!  I used the Branch Out set and made a bush with the tree stamp.  i stamped the top of the bush first and then carefully added the ground base...so basically I eliminated part of the trunk.  Then I stamped the splotchy part in a couple shades of purple and a smidge of green...all technical terms there!  For the little branches of lilac blooms, I just colored portions of the tree stamp with a marker to get what I wanted.  Lastly I added some ribbon, a little embossing, and a scalloped edge.  

This card was for friends of ours for their anniversary, but unfortunately seeing the lilacs now make me think of something else entirely.  Not sure how much I have talked about them here, but we have two dogs that were more than just pets to us...pretty much just really furry members of our family.  Unfortunately, we lost one of those dogs last Thursday and we have been dealing with that loss.  Our beloved Lucy was a great dog that could snuggle with the best of them.  She would care for us by licking any wounds we had...sometimes, I wouldn't even know I had cut myself until Lucy would try and take care of me.  We got her about 6 months after we got our first dog, Alex, but they are basically the same age.  She blessed our lives for 8.5 years and left us far too  soon!  She had been slowing down lately and we were attributing it to her back legs (in which she has had surgery on before), so we made an appt. for the vet to take a look at her Thursday morning.  She looked sad and had for a couple of days.  The doctor took a look at her mouth and realized that we were dealing with something more than leg problems.  From an abdomen x-ray, they found a very large (size of softball or grapefruit) tumor on her spleen.  There was a chance that the tumor was not cancerous, so we decided to allow the doctor to operate on Lucy to remove the tumor and her spleen (which she technically did not need).  If the tumor turned out to be benign then this would fix her...if it was malignant, it would buy her some time.  Lucy made it through the surgery and the doctor was pleased with how everything went.  She actually removed around a football size tumor (bigger than we expected) which was about 3-4 lbs.  Lucy woke from surgery and seemed to be doing ok, but then she started having labored breathing a couple hours later and finally drew her last breath.  So all I can say is we will miss you terribly Lucy-Belle!

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Branch Out, Everyday Flexible Phrases; Paper - Lovely Lilac, Lavender Lace, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White; Ink - Chocolate Chip, Lovely Lilac, Lavender Lace, Certainly Celery; Accessories - Certainly Celery ribbon, Cuttlebug Textile embossing folder, Ticket Corner Punch, Scallop Edge Punch, dimensionals