Entirely Emily: Memory Stone for my Pet

Ever since my buddy Charlie went up to heaven last year, I've been wanting to make a memory stone. He was more than just a dog to me. He was my baby. I took him everywhere I could and he was a part of every family function. Because he was family. All of my close friends know this is true. I took pictures of him like I now do to my kids. I still miss him.

I wanted something to put in our backyard to remember him because it still feels like we are missing someone when the whole family goes outside to play. When a human loved one dies, they get a stone, I wanted him to have one too. So I bought one to make and it sat under my bed for a year. Half the time I forgot about it and the other half we just had so much going on.

I bought this kit at Micheals with my handy dandy weekly 40% off coupon. It ended up being like $12.

It came with some stampy things and some rocks. Not too exciting or very him. Now you know me, I'm never one to just go with a pre-bought design all the way so I also bought these glass gems at Micheals. It was like $3.99. I'm sure I can use the rest for something.

Then I knew I wanted to draw his face on it. I went on the computer and found a good picture of him. That I though was really...him. I used Photoshop to trace a basic outline of his face and markings for a simple drawing that would look good in concrete. This is what I got.

I went outside with my bucket and my box of stuff for Micheals which included a bag of concrete and a mixing stick. The instructions were easy to follow... Mix two cups of water with your concrete bag in a bucket and mix until it looked like brownie batter. And they weren't kidding on the instructions when they said watch out for concrete dust. It was very dusty. I wouldn't let the girls stand by me while it was poured.

Then you spread it into the plastic pan they give you. This was harder than I thought because all I had was the mixing stick. But it worked out and then I leveled it but shaking it gently. It also said that if you had to move it to put it on something very hard so the mold wouldn't bend. I found some MDF in the garage and used that.

Then the girls got to work with the glass marble things. I asked them to only put them along the outside which K was great at , S, not so much. It became her job to hand the marbles to K in the order of Big Clear, small blue, Big Clear, Small blue.

Then it says to let it sit and start to set for a least 30 minutes before you can start to write on it and if water starts to form on top to soak it up with a paper towel and wait some more. Wwwweeelll... it kept doing that for 3 hours after! I would go outside and check on it and soak up some water, go outside and check on it and soak up some water. You get the idea. I did that for 3 hours! The green circle shows all of the water that kept coming up. Now it was 85 degrees and very humid so that may have had something to do with it but you never know.

At some point I got tired of waiting and worried that it would set after too long so I started to try and sketch out his picture in the concrete. You can kinda see it below. It was still too wet.