miss you, friend|ScrapMuch?!

It is December and Sketchy Friday at ScrapMuch?!

This layout was like therapy for me. It's about my friend Rachel. We met after high school (she was a year younger than me) and went to college together for a few years. After I graduated from nursing school she moved back home to southern Indiana and we started to grow apart. This year, she graduated from nursing school and was working in an emergency department. She had a 19 month old baby (and a 15 year old son she had in high school) and planned to get married next July. And then on November 1, one of our friends text me and told me Rachel was killed in an accident. It was still under investigation, she didn't really know anything yet, and I was in shock.

Working in the nursing field, I see people die. I have held the hand of an elderly woman taking her last breath. I have been the first one to discover someone who has passed in the middle of the night. I have had to tell families their loved ones didn't survive. I have had to pronounce patients dead. I have watched people walk in to the emergency department talking and minutes later, die in front of me. I have heard the gut wrenching wails of a mother after her son was killed on the highway in a motorcycle accident. 

But hearing that someone you know, someone your age, someone you shared so much with, someone you wanted the best for, someone who would always be considered a friend no matter how far apart you live from each other... that's something different. That's hard to deal with.

I still find it hard to believe. I just can't wrap my mind around it. I read the article. I saw the photos. But my mind just cannot believe it. How does something like this happen?! I just don't get it.

So I wanted to do a page in her honor and I wanted to use some recent photos that show how happy she was and her beautiful smile. She had such a pretty smile.

Here is our sketch this week:

Here is my page. I used 8.5 x 11 size and simplified the design to focus on the photos. I used my Cricut to cut the flourishes instead of using the strips of paper like in the sketch. Since I was using a smaller page size, I had to use two photos instead of three, but I did keep the circle shapes from the sketch. The circles were cut with my Spellbinders Grand Calibur Die Cutting Machine + a Lawn Shapes circle die cut. I exchanged hearts for the butterflies shown in the sketch and had to downsize the  number of those as well.

miss you, friend

Thanks for stopping by today and reading my story. If you want to play along with the sketch this week, we'd love to have you! You can visit the ScrapMuch? blog for details about the challenge + to see inspiration from other design team members.
 
supplies
patterned paper: Studio Calico (grey floral); Echo Park Simple Life (polka dot)
stamps, wood veneer: Studio Calico
embossing powder: My Stamp Box (gold); American Crafts ZING! (opaque grapefruit)
circle die cuts: Lawn Shapes