How Do Ashes Get Inside Cremation Jewelry?

 

Cremation jewelry has grown in popularity as a way to commemorate a loved one and keep their essence close. Even so, there’s been a lot of confusion about just how ashes get inside the cremation jewel. Perhaps that’s because there are typically three ways that ashes can be added to cremation jewelry. How ashes get inside a specific jewel depends on the type of cremation jewel in question.

What Is Cremation Jewelry?

Cremation jewelry is either made to hold ashes by having a small chamber inside in which you add the ashes and re-seal yourself or is made using ashes or made entirely with ashes. There are actually hundreds of cremation jewel designs that represent these three types. Although no cremation jewel requires a lot of ashes to create, some require more ash than others. When shopping for cremation jewelry, customers may wish to consider how the ashes get inside of each jewel when making their purchase decision. Some jewels require ashes to be sent to the artist that creates a custom glass pendant or bead; standard non-custom metal jewelry requires the customer to add the ash to the jewel themselves.

Cremation Jewelry Types

As mentioned, there are three categories of cremation jewelry:

Standard Cremation Jewels

Ashes Jewelry
          Precious Metal Jewelry To Hold Ashes

Standard cremation jewelry is made from precious metals like silver gold and titanium come in a myriad of designs. Popular designs include hearts, angels, flowers, paw prints, infinity symbols, and more. These jewels feature an inner chamber that is designed to hold and seal a small amount of a loved one’s ashes. Customers will add a pinch of ash by removing a screw in plug and (using a small funnel that comes with the jewel) to fill the chamber after they receive their order. It’s easy and step by step directions are included

Custom Cremation Glass Jewels

Custom cremation glass jewelry is created by glass artists who use a small amount of ash in the glass jewel’s design. These glass jewels, usually beads or pendants, are custom created. When the glass jewel is being made and still in a molten state the artist adds the ashes which are incapsulated in the glass. The ashes turn white and if the color of the glass is not too dark you can see the ashes inside. When you order them we will send an ash collection kit by mail and customers will send a small amount of their loved one’s ashes to directly to our artists who will incorporate the ash into their jewel design.

Custom Cremation Diamonds and Crystals

Ashes inside Jewelry
             Custom Glass Jewelry

Custom cremation diamonds and crystals are made from the ashes. It’s a patented process, so it takes more time to create the finished jewels. Usually, cremation crystals can be made in 10 weeks. Cremation diamonds, however, require a longer production process; they can be made in 8-12 months. Again, we will send each customer an ash collection kit so the specified amount of their loved one’s ashes can be used to commission these types of cremation jewels. Any ashes that are not used are returned along with the jewelry.

How to Fill Cremation Jewelry

Customers will fill standard cremation jewelry themselves. Each jewel sold by Cremation Solutions comes with step-by-step instructions that show customers how to add ash to the jewel. These jewels hold a tiny amount of ash–often just a pinch–within their hollow chamber. To open the chamber, customers will remove a small screw and use the mini funnel provided with their order to fill the chamber with ashes. Then, they seal the chamber and replace the screw. The ashes remain safe within the jewel’s chamber and the jewel is then ready to be worn.

Click Here Crystals Made From Ashes
                       Crystal Gems Made From Ashes

Cremation Solutions jewelry artists add ashes to the other types of jewels we offer–custom cremation glass jewels, custom cremation crystals, and custom cremation diamonds. Upon ordering these types of jewels, our company will send customers with a kit that comes with step-by-step instructions for providing us with a small amount of their loved one’s ashes. The amount needed depends on the type of jewel in question. Metal jewelry holds just a pinch of ashes. Custom orders will require anywhere from a tablespoon for crystals and half of one cup for cremation diamonds.

Following the kit’s instructions, customers will add the ash to the supplied container and mail it back to the company. We have a meticulous tracking process in place to ensure that no customer’s ashes are ever mixed with any other ashes. Also, if we do not need all of the ashes supplied to create the custom jewel that’s been ordered, we will mail them back with the completed item.

During the creation of these types of cremation jewels, our artisans will add the ashes as part of the design process. Once the items are mailed back to the customer, they are ready to wear or to present as gifts to other loved ones.

If you have any questions about our jewelry creation process, get in touch with Cremation Solutions to learn more about our custom jewelry and standard cremation jewels. We offer a wide range of cremation jewelry. It can be difficult to choose in some cases, so we are on hand to help you make your selection and answer any questions you may have about our jewels and creation processes.

Has Covid-19 Increased The Cremations In The USA?

Cremation Solutions

The novel coronavirus, which was detected in the metropolitan area of Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province, continues to infect people around the world, including the United States. Since its discovery in late December, COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by coronavirus, has infected over 3 million individuals, resulting in over 215,000 fatalities all over the world. While Spain, Italy, France, and the UK have posted over 20,000 deaths each, the US has recorded over 1 million coronavirus cases, a third of the world’s total infections, and over 57,000 deaths. That has put pressure on funeral homes and crematories across the country. Funeral homes are having to adjust to delays and the sadness of low attended funerals.

In New York, the hardest-hit state by the pandemic, there have been over 17,000 COVID-19-related deaths from a total of 295,137 infections. However, New York City has been the epicenter of the disease in the state, recording over 162,000 cases and 11,708 deaths as of Tuesday, March 28. While state administrations and health officials report that the number of fatalities has reached the backside of the death curve, funeral-home and crematory workers, whose duty is to ensure the dead are laid to rest respectfully, say they have never been busier.

Misinformation About Cremation Orders by the Government

Delayed FuneralsAs America continues to grapple with the pandemic, several images and reports on social media offer misguided information about what happens after people die from coronavirus. One particular image went viral, telling people that once a person is deceased, they become the government’s property and will be incinerated without wakes or funeral services.

The report has elicited contradicting responses from state agencies, medical examiners, and funeral directors. The NY Funeral Directors Association responded to the matter, saying: “We haven’t seen or heard of such claims. Funeral Homes in the state are still operating under the state guidelines.” Additionally, the New York State Department of Health noted that funeral homes, crematories, and cemeteries, being essential businesses, were allowed to remain operational, despite other non-essential businesses remaining closed. The deceased require a proper send-off, complete with a wake, structured funeral, and burial. Nonetheless, funeral homes will be required to adhere to social distancing and only allow a limited number of attendees during these gatherings.

Funeral Homes Forced to Turn Away Grieving Families, Suggesting Cremation

Cremation BoxesWith the increasing number of deaths in the US continue to surge, the demand for funeral services has drastically spiked. Many funeral homes have exceeded their capacities, with some caskets lying in unsuitable areas such as the lobbies and corridors. For instance, the Funeral Director at Lawrence H Woodward Funeral Home in Brooklyn, Kendall Lindsay, said, “By the end of March, we had over 120 planned funeral services. As of April 5, the number had increased to 127. We are now compelled not to register any new cases because of the dwindling storage space.”

Throughout the city, staffs in mortuaries, morgues, and funeral homes continue to scramble and find space for new COVID-19-related deaths. “We currently have bodies that cannot be buried now. We will have to postpone the funeral services and hold them after at least one week or more,” said Lindsay, who was forced to turn away 20 families, leaving them with no other option but to cremate their loved ones with no wakes or proper funeral arrangements.

Although they may be dealing with many cases awaiting proper funeral arrangements, it is quite unprofessional of funeral homes to deny survivors to have a wake before the funeral and burial. It robs families of deceased persons of the much-needed condolences and support during such a difficult time. That goes against our human principles and sentimental values. Funeral services allow survivors to eulogize and share stories about the dead loved one, which is critical in ensuring that the deceased has a respectable send-off. In NY Bodies left unclaimed are usually buried by the State on Hart Island.

Hart Island

The Immense Backlog at Crematories

Following the decision by funeral homes to take any additional cases, many families have resorted to cremating the remains of their beloved. The situation has grown so dire, prompting cemetery directors to air their concerns, term it as the highest surge in demand that has never been experienced in many decades.

A significant fraction of the New York population prefers cremating the dead instead of burials. Typically, the four crematories located in the US most densely populated city could comfortably offer cremation services. Still, the coronavirus pandemic has rendered them inadequate to cater to the ever-increasing number of bodies waiting to be cremated. With such an unprecedented backlog of bodies in crematories, it is clear that outdated laws on burials and cremations to be amended. According to these statutes, cremation facilities can only be confined to cemeteries. While there are over 40 cemeteries across the five boroughs in New York, there is only a limited number of crematories.

Among the four facilities, one is located in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx, and the other two in Queens. The surge in the number of bodies has put pressure on resources in crematories. Currently, a location that used to cremate ten bodies each day now has to deal with a more significant daily workload of 15 bodies. Others have to cremate double the number of bodies they would in a single day. That has forced the state government to ease restrictions on air-quality regulations in the bid to allow crematories to extend their hours of operations. Still, many families continue to ring them at odd hours, making these locations busier than they ever been in decades.

Shortening the Wait: Covid-19 Victims Transported Upstate for Cremation

As a result of that, the pressure trickles down to hospitals where “new” dead bodies are presented in morgues in large numbers. Patients who have passed on now have to spend more time in the morgue because the “government restrictions have made it challenging for families to make quick funeral arrangements.” Furthermore, doctors and nurses are delaying signing death certificates because of the increasing backlog and newly reported cases that occur in their hundreds every day. That presents a big problem because bodies cannot be transported to crematory facilities without a complete death certificate.

The situation is so dire that caskets containing bodies of Covid-19 victims have filled funeral homes. The last resort is to transport them upstate to help families to access cremation services as quickly as possible.

Associate professor of mortuary sciences, Mr. David Penepent, who manages the funeral services administration program at the New York State University in Canton, started the “Hands with a Heart” initiative that works to transport the bodies to crematories in upstate New York and other neighboring states where there the number of bodies awaiting cremation is still manageable.

Mr. Penepent was overwhelmed when he was greeted by the astonishing number of cardboard caskets with bodies at one of the funeral homes in Queens. With help from his two students, they wheeled out the bodies, first lining them in the hallway, before gently laying the boxes in one of their two vans destined for a crematory outside New York.

Since the start of April, the Hands with a Heart program has transported decedents from overwhelmed cremation facilities and funeral homes to crematories in far-off places such as Pennsylvania and Vermont. According to Mr. Penepent, “These are not simply bodies. We are handling people with families who love them. Therefore, we do this with care, compassion, dignity, and respect.”

During the Easter weekend, the initiative had successfully moved 70 bodies, followed by 150 the following week, and last week, 300 bodies were transported. The program comes as a relief to grieving families that could have otherwise waited for days and even weeks to access cremation services. It has also eased the pressure off funeral homes and hospital morgues that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic.

Why Such a Backlog in Crematories During the Covid-19 Pandemic?

To curb the spread of the new coronavirus, the federal and state governments have laid down measures to try and control the transmission rate of the disease. Virtually every state went in lockdown with administrative officials urging people to practice social distancing. That meant that businesses were closed, reducing the income for many would-be-working Americans. Further, over 26 million have filed unemployment claims. That said, the economic crisis has forced families to turn to the economic appeal of cremation as the only option. Hopefully many will have full blown memorial services once social distancing is a memory.

Cremation Memorials Are More Important Than Ever!

With the lack of public funerals and the support that they bring to survivors. People are spending their money in more creative ways starting with visual online funerals and memorial pages where people can pay tribute from home. Keepsakes and jewelry that holds ashes inside is a way that people have been using to help bring comfort to the loss while keeping a physical part of their loved one closer, with no need to visit a cemetery.

Click Here For Our Full Selection of Crystals Made From Ashes
Crystal Gems Made From Ashes
Ashes in glass
               From Ashes Comes Art

 

 

 

Celebrate Your Loved One’s Life with Pandora-Style Memory Charms

Pandora Style Cremation Beads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrate Your Loved One’s Life with Pandora-Style Memory Charms. Wearing jewels to commemorate a loved one who has passed away is an ancient practice. Even today, many women wear lockets or other jewels in honor of a beloved relative or spouse. Given the popularity of the Pandora charm bracelet, Cremation Solutions is now offering a line of commemorative Pandora compatible cremation beads. These beads are custom-made from glass, incorporating the ashes of your loved one, or made from silver or gold and easily filled by the customer. They are available in many beautiful designs. Wearing memory jewelry allows people to feel connected to the essence of their loved one or a special pet.

Cremation Solutions Memory Beads and Charms for Pandora

Ashes JewelryA Pandora Bracelet has become a woman’s signature piece of jewelry, a conversation piece that offers timeless appeal. The bracelet is a loop that holds Pandora beads or charms made to fit the bracelet. The bracelets are available in silver, gold, and leather. Women have become fascinated by the Pandora platform because of the extraordinary array of available beads and charms that attach to the bracelet. Each woman can customize her bracelet with colors and charms that reflect her life—that even tell the story of her life. There are charms that represent hobbies, occupations, family, and pets. Every completed Pandora bracelet is essentially a custom piece of jewelry that is uniquely suited to the woman who wears it.

Pandora bracelets, not surprisingly are becoming treasured heirlooms. For this reason, many women are choosing to add beads and charms to their bracelets that reflect a beloved family member or a dear pet. For many years, families have been transforming some of the ashes of their deceased loved ones into commemorative objects that serve as daily reminders of the love that continues and the bond that even death cannot erase. Wearing a Pandora compatible cremation bead made with some of the ashes of a loved one is another way to experience and honor that connection.

Cremation BeadsCremation Solutions has a wide array of bead styles to choose from.

The beads are designed to fit not only Pandora bracelets, but are also compatible with similar styles like the Biagi and Troll bracelet systems. There are a dazzling array of colors to consider for your memory bead like turquoise, green, pink, red, yellow, lavender, blue, and even black. In most cases, except for the black beads, the ashes are clearly visible within the glass. Cremation Solutions employs a special process to create these glass beads that literally encase and protect the ashes while showcasing them in a beautiful commemorative jewel. Choose a color that complements your Pandora bracelet or opt for your loved one’s favorite color. The swirling ashes help to create a truly one-of-a-kind design and will serve as a timeless reminder of your loved one’s essence that you can keep close to you always.

Each bead is designed with a large center hole that easily slides onto the bracelet. Cremation Solutions’ Pandora-style beads for ashes will complement other beads that are already showcased on the bracelet. Choose between single and multi-color glass beads that highlight your loved one’s ashes in a beautiful time capsule or fill silver and gold beads via a tiny portal that seals with a threaded plug. All are commemorative jewels that can be worn every day.

Cremation Solutions: A Trusted Brand

Cremation Solutions is a Vermont-based company that specializes in cremation products and funeral planning. Known for its customer care and focus, Cremation Solutions has been creating memory jewelry for over a decade. With lamp work and glass blowing techniques each single jewel is a custom piece made from the ashes you send, every jewel is created with extraordinary care and artistry. Cremation Solutions employs high-quality materials, knowing that each bead is destined to become a family heirloom, a precious keepsake. These aren’t merely ordinary beads; they are sacred and dear to the wearer.

Cremation Solutions has created a secure process by which all ashes are labeled, tracked, and protected from the moment they arrive in the mail. Their reputation for quality excellence has led them to become a trusted name in the memory jewelry field. It is the company’s heartfelt pleasure to create objects that provide so much comfort and meaning to the people who wear them.

The Ordering Process

Ordering your custom Pandora-style cremation jewelry is easy through Cremation Solutions’ website. The precious metal beads of silver and gold are easily filled by the customer and comes with very easy step by step instructions to add a pinch of ashes yourself. For custom made one of a kind glass cremation beads Cremation Solutions will immediately send you a kit to safely and securely send your loved one’s ashes in the mail. Included in this kit are easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions that make the process as simple and stress-free as possible. Each kit includes a container that allows for easy measuring so that you send exactly the amount of ashes needed to create your Pandora-style memory bead. The name of your loved one or pet is clearly designated on the container, along with a unique identifying number that allows Cremation Solutions to track your ashes from the moment they arrive. There is never any intermingling of ashes; the process ensures that all orders are kept separate. Any unused ashes will be returned with the completed bead.

Treasured Gifts

Cremation Solutions’ Pandora-style cremation beads also make for a unique heirloom gift. Many customers choose to have commemorative beads created for several members of the family as a remembrance of a beloved parent or grandparent. Not only are the beads beautiful with their glassy finish and eye-catching colors; they carry the essence of a dear loved one, which makes them a veritable treasure.

Silver_Gold_BeadsMemorial jewelry can be an important way to experience a connection to your loved one who has passed on. It can provide not only comfort, but also inspires interesting conversation with its beauty. If you have questions about these remarkable beads, contact Cremation Solutions, who will be happy to address any concerns or questions you may have prior to ordering. Cremation Solutions offers a wide array of other types of memory jewels and other cremation products, as well. Visit www.cremationsolutions.com to view their complete line of products and for valuable information about cremation products and ceremonies. Meanwhile, if you haven’t started a Pandora-type bracelet yet, you should consider adding one to your jewelry collection, along with a memory bead commemorating someone you love. Each bracelet and charm not only tells a piece of your personal story, but with Cremation Solutions’ cremation beads, they now additionally honor those who have touched your life the most.

New Pandora Compatible Cremation Jewelry !

Celebrate Your Loved One’s Life with Pandora compatible Memory beads. Surely these one of a kind beads will be your most cherished of all. The silver and gold beads are easily filled by you and our custom glass beads are made with a small amount of cremation ashes infused inside!

Bead_BackgroundWearing jewels that commemorate a loved one that has passed away is an ancient practice. Even today, many women wear lockets or other jewels in honor of a beloved relative or spouse. Given the popularity of the Pandora charm bracelet and charms, Cremation Solutions is now offering a line of commemorative Pandora compatible ashes jewelry. If you have a Pandora bracelet or are thinking about getting one, you can have special beads created that incorporate the ashes of your loved one within the beautiful design. Wearing memory jewelry allows people to feel connected to the essence of their loved one or even a special pet.

Pandora Bracelets and Charms………….(Order Online Here)

A Pandora bracelet has become a woman’s signature piece of jewelry, a conversation piece that offers timeless appeal. The bracelet is a loop that holds Pandora beads or charms that are made to fit the bracelet. The bracelets are available in silver, gold, and even leather. Women have become fascinated by the Pandora platform, because of the extraordinary array of available beads and charms that attach to the bracelet. Each woman can customize her bracelet with colors and charms that reflect her life—that can even tell the story of her life. There are charms that represent hobbies, occupations, and family. Every completed Pandora bracelet is essentially a custom piece of jewelry that is uniquely suited to the woman who wears it.

Cremation Solutions Memory Beads that fit Pandora

Silver_Gold_BeadsPandora bracelets, not surprisingly, are becoming treasured heirlooms. For this reason, it isn’t surprising that many women are choosing to add beads and charms to their bracelets that reflect a beloved family member or even a dear pet. For many years, families have been transforming some of the ashes of their deceased loved ones into commemorative objects that serve as daily reminders of the love that continues and the bond that even death cannot erase. Wearing a jewel like a Pandora bead made with some of the ashes of a loved one is another way to experience that connection. Keep the essence of your loved close with a Pandora bead that represents a continuation of that love.

Cremation Solutions has a wide array of bead styles to choose from. The beads are designed to fit Pandora bracelets as well as similar styles like Biagi and Troll bracelet systems. They offer silver and gold beads that you can actually fill yourself or custom made glass beads with the ashes fussed inside. There are a dazzling array of colors to consider for your memory bead like turquoise, pink, red, lavender, and even black. In most cases, excepting black beads, the ashes are clearly visible. Cremation Solutions employs a special process to create these glass beads that literally encase and protect the ashes while showcasing them in a beautiful commemorative jewel. Choose a color that complements your Pandora bracelet or opt for your loved one’s favorite color. The swirling ashes complement the design and will serve as a timeless reminder of your loved one’s essence that you can keep close to you always.

Each bead is designed with a large center hole that easily slides onto Pandora-type bracelet systems. Pandora ashes jewelry will complement other beads that are already showcased on the bracelet.

Cremation Solutions: A Trusted Brand

Cremation Solutions is a Vermont based company that specializes in cremation products and services. A trusted name known for its custom care and customer focus, Cremation Solutions has been creating memory jewelry for nearly a decade. Because every single jewel is a custom piece made from the ashes you send, every jewel is created with extraordinary care and artistry. Cremation Solutions employs high-quality materials, knowing that each jewel is destined to become a family heirloom, a precious keepsake. These aren’t merely ordinary jewels; these are jewels that are sacred and dear to their wearer.

Cremation Solutions has created a no-fail process by which all ashes are labeled and protected from the moment they arrive in the mail. We have a reputation for quality excellence and have become a trusted name in the memory jewelry field. It’s the company’s heartfelt pleasure to create objects that provide so much comfort to the people that wear them.

The Ordering Process and Our Full Selection (Click Here)

Ordering Pandora ashes jewelry is easy. For custom glass jewelry we immediately send you a kit to safely and securely send us your loved one’s ashes in the mail. Included in this kit are easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions that make the process a streamlined one. Each kit has a container that allows for easy measuring so that you send us exactly the amount of ashes we need to create your Pandora memory bead. You’ll see right on the container the name of your loved one or pet along with a unique identifying number that allows the company to track your ashes from the moment it arrives. There is never any intermingling of ashes; the process ensures that all orders are kept separate. Any unused ashes will be returned along with the completed bead, which takes anywhere from eight to ten weeks to create. Our unique line of fillable silver and gold beads are simply filled by the customer. A small screw is removed and the ashes are inserted through the provided miniature funnel before replacing the screw for a permanent seal.

Pandora_bracelet_blogTreasured Gifts

Pandora jewelry also make for wonderful heirloom gifts. Many of our customers choose to have commemorative beads created for several members of the family as a remembrance of a beloved parent or grandparent. Not only are the beads beautiful with their glassy finish and eye-catching colors; they carry the essence of a dear loved one, which makes them a veritable treasure. As an unforgettable gift, these Pandora memory beads can be given any time of year—whenever you choose to place your order.

Memory jewelry can be an important way to experience a connection to your loved one that has passed on. They can provide comfort just as they inspire conversation with their beauty. If you have questions about these remarkable jewels, get in touch with Cremation Solutions. The company can answer all your questions before you place your order. Cremation Solutions offers a wide array of other types of memory jewels too. Be sure to scroll through their website to see them all. If you haven’t started a Pandora or Pandora-type bracelet yet, you should consider adding one to your jewelry collection along with a memory bead commemorating someone you love. The bracelets are comfortable to wear and can be worn with casual or evening wear. You’ll love owning one because you’ll enjoy the custom process and how, altogether, each bead and charm can tell your personal story.

To See Our Full Selection (Click Here)

 

 

Why is Scattering Ashes So Popular

Spreading Ashes
Everyone is Doing it!

The scattering of ashes is now the most popular thing to do with cremation ashes. Keeping ashes home in a cremation urn is still common, however the burial of the urn in a cemetery is being bypassed by the faster and more glamorous method of scattering the ashes to the four winds and becoming one with nature. In fact, research indicates that almost half of all Americans choose cremation over a ground burial or mausoleum. Of those being cremated I estimate that more then 60% are choosing to scatter. Why have scattering ashes become such an acceptable and apparently desirable aspect of the funeral process? I would say that one reason is that survivors can choose locations of natural beauty that are both meaningful to the deceased as well as those who live on. People are drawn towards nature when faced with a death, they want to do what’s natural and like the idea of returning to the earth ASAP! Sociologists suggest that it may have something to do with the fact that people are highly mobile now and generations of families rarely remain in the same area as they did 50+ years ago. Moreover, because the economy and job market are consistently unstable, it is less likely that a family member would remain living close enough to visit another family member’s grave for an extended period.

It Makes People Feel Good

Scattering Ashes at SeaPeople who have participated in scattering the ashes of a loved one say it is a deeply emotional experience that makes them feel closer to the deceased because they are doing something so personal and meaningful on behalf of the person’s remains.  In addition, knowing they are fulfilling their loved one’s last wish helps them deal with the loss of that person by creating a sense of oneness with his or her spirit. For some, scattering ashes strengthens the emotional bond they had with the deceased by renewing a special spiritual bond that cannot be experienced while alive.  When we allow the wind or water to embrace a loved one’s ashes, we feel deep within ourselves that they are experiencing a rapturous sensation of freedom, vibrant energy and serenity. Scattering ashes because the deceased wanted you to scatter their ashes over the sea, a beach at sunset, into the clouds or over mountains from an airplane can relieve the anger, sadness, guilt and pain of losing that person to the natural processes of birth, maturation and death.

 

More Affordable Than an Expensive Traditional Burial

Unless the deceased had the means to maintain a life insurance policy for 20 or more years, purchasing a traditional funeral is often left up to his or her family members. Caskets are expensive and require you to buy a cemetery plot. Essentially, people just do not have the money for a traditional burial anymore so they are choosing different and less conventional perspectives regarding funeral preparations and the location of a loved one’s final resting place. Today’s society is more concerned with the spiritual and ceremonial aspect of the funeral process and less concerned about the physical disposition of the traditional handling and viewing of the body.

The Going “Green” Movement

Green Ashes
Scattering = Green Footprint

Since the 1990s, “going green” has slowly but steadily improved all aspects of our lives; from recycling items at home, using natural ingredients in cleaning products and taking part in preserving the environment by establishing more animal reserves and protected wildlife areas. This concern over excessive land use and the destruction of forests for commercial purposes has also contributed to the popularity of cremation and scattering a loved one’s ashes. Injecting a body with harmful chemicals and putting it in a man manufactured casket then sealing it in a concrete vault, all to take up space, just isn’t cool anymore.

People are Living Longer and Making Their Own Burial Decisions

In 1900, the average lifespan for U.S. citizens was 46 for men and 48 for women. Today, it is 73 for men and 76 for women. This means that people are living long enough to make their own decisions about their final wishes instead of their relatives making funeral plans. According to surveys asking men and women why they opt for having their ashes scattered, the four main reasons for electing to be cremated are: 1) it is more affordable; 2) greener; 3) simpler to arrange and 4) personal preference. They love the idea of using a bunch of the money they saved on cremation and putting it into a grand celebration of their life in a more party like atmosphere.

 Water and Earth Scattering

Scattering In Ocean
Surfer Gets Scattered

Specially made urns are used to scatter ashes over a body of water or landscape that come in a variety of colors, shapes and styles. They are functional in a way to prevent accidental dispersion of ashes until the scattering ceremony takes place or are tube-like and come with a cap to keep ashes safe until the scattering ceremony. Some scattering urns even convert into a birdhouse following the scattering. Ashes get spread and birds get a new home in which they may continue the cycle of life. Scattering at sea can get a bit messy because of the wind and the waves. Using an urn that’s made to scatter ashes at sea can add ease and dignity to the scattering ceremony itself. Biodegradable urns that float a few minutes allowing people to toss flower petals as the urn drifts, then eventually sinks and dissolves in the water. Ashes are held safely in biodegradable urns until they are buried in the ground or placed in water, where the urn slowly disintegrates and returns to the elements from which it came.

Where and Why Do People Scatter Their Loved One’s Ashes?

The most popular places to scatter cremated remains are naturally meaningful places that the deceased loved and revered. Beaches, lakes, parks, a favorite vacation spot or even the Minneapolis Mall of America are places where “ashes” have been scattered. Over water and in the garden are the two most popular locations. Scattering ashes from a helicopter or small plane while flying above a place that was special to the deceased is also becoming more common.

Scattering Lets Your Spirit Soar
Scattering Lets Your Spirit Soar

Spiritual concepts surrounding the act of scattering a person’s ashes originally come from Hindu and Buddhist beliefs regarding physical, or bodily life. The belief is that the life one lives on Earth is ephemeral and the soul experiences many transmigrations as an eternal but ever-evolving spirit. Over thousands of years, Hindu and Buddhist beliefs concerning cremation were eventually adopted by mystical philosophers, spiritual individuals searching for an alternative to traditional religions and naturalists who wanted to symbolically return themselves to the place from which they came–the Earth.

Scattering Ashes Helps People Through the Grieving Process

After the death of a loved one, people experience five stages of grief–numbness, yearning, guilt, anger and acceptance–in varying intensities. Some may feel more anger than others while some miss the deceased so much they cannot move past the stage of “yearning” towards the final stage of acceptance. Reality may not hit a person until the memorial service is actually underway and they see the body of the deceased resting in

Scattering Ashes
Free At Last!

an open casket.

Following the strange sensation of disassociation after realizing that a loved one has passed away, most people have feelings of numbness replaced by a yearning for the loved one, an almost agitated state that causes moments of extreme anxiety, panic and hopelessness.  Watching the burial of a loved one–the whole process of lowering the casket into the grave and later, visiting the grave after it has been filled in with mounds of dirt–can be more upsetting than the actual passing away of the deceased. Although the belief that a person’s soul leaves the body at death dominates most Western religions, it is still hard to think about someone you loved very much as a body buried underground.

Cremation Jewelry and Keepsake Urns
–Another Way to Always Feel Close to a Loved One

Ashes Jewelry
Jewelry To Hold Ashes

In addition to scattering ashes, you can keep some of the loved one’s ashes always with you by placing a small amount of the ashes in cremation keepsake urns or jewelry pieces.  Cremation jewelry comes in three different styles: the kind filled by the customer, jewelry made with cremation ashes integrated into glass beads and jewelry made from the actual ashes.  After a scattering ceremony, cremation jewelry keepsakes are beautiful mementos that can help those having a difficult time with the grieving process hold onto their loved one in a symbolic way for as long as they want without needing to make an emotionally difficult visit to a grave site. This is why it’s always a good idea to retain a portion of ashes to be shared with surviving family and friends.

Jeff Staab is a funeral director in southern Vermont. A certified Life Cycle Celebrant. He owns and operates www.cremationsolutions.com and is a cremation memorial and ash scattering specialist. When he’ not dreaming up the next cool cremation product he enjoys adventure in the mountains and on the sea, cooking for friends, social responsibility and green living. He can be reached at jeff@cremationsolutions.com

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Aquitted of Murder Cassie Anthony Now Wears A Cremation Jewelry Pendant

This Thursday People magazine will release a story called “The Strange and Lonely Life of Casey Anthony”.

Cassie and Caylee in Happier Times

It will be a year since Casey was acquitted of murdering her daughter, two year old Caylee. The article talks about her boring life living in seclusion surfing the internet and checking on her most hated women in America status. She now lives in West Palm Beach Florida were she serves a year on probation for check fraud. According to a friend she has gained twenty lbs from inactivity and eats allot. She plans on leaving the country when her probation is complete. Apparently enough bleeding hearts have sent her donations to live on and she lives with a sugar daddy she calls Pop’s.

So why are we writing about Casey on our Cremation Solutions blog!. Apparently Last year Casey and her mother Cindy reconciled via skype. While Casie was in jail, Caylee was cremated and Cindy purchased two pendants which hold some of little Caylee’s ashes.

Casey Wearing Pendant Containing Caylee's Ashes

Due to our privacy policy I cannot confirm that she purchased the cremation jewelry from Cremation Solutions. She waited two years to give it to Casey and asked her first if she would wear it. The two made a pact to always wear the identical pendants to honor the memory of Caylee. Here at Cremation Solutions we know this is not an unusual way of families using keepsakes like jewelry that holds ashes to connect survivors to share in their grief.

Reading the latest news on the subject though, I noticed the media has portrayed the wearing of what they are calling an ashes necklace as some kind of freakish invention of this bizarre family. Here at Cremation Solutions we know that this is far from the truth. Our experience tells us that our many customers that purchase our jewelry for ashes, can’t thank us enough. It’s how I know how important and cherished the jewelry becomes. I can’t count how many times I’ve been told how comforting the jewelry is, and how many never take it off.

I guess I just wanted to point out that there are many in our society that still have never heard of cremation jewelry and find the idea of wearing it a bit strange. I must say that even I thought it was a strange new fad when as a funeral director I started selling cremation jewelry 15 years ago. After one former client approached me months later in the supermarket to thank me for helping her through the funeral of her husband, she began to speak softly. A warm glow came over her face as she opened her blouse to reveal the fish pendant I sold her, as she whispered he’s always with me. I never questioned the jewelry again as a new gimmick to make a sale. The people I have served over the years constantly remind me of the importance of their most cherished piece of jewelry. For some people the Idea is just too much. It’s these people that I now recommend fingerprint Jewelry, which is a one of a kind pendant or rings, faced with the actual fingerprint of our loved one. The fingerprint Jewelry is equally cherished and shared amongst family members.

Murder or not we all need to heal. I think it was a very thoughtful gesture of her mom to gift her the necklace. Family is family you only have one. It took a long time for her mom to give it, the healing will not erase the scared life Casey lives. What strange is that the media acts like the cremation jewelry is some strange family creation. Cremation Jewelry is purchased and worn by thousands of Americans every year and is widely available at funeral homes and online at www.cremationsolutions.com

How do you feel about people wearing cremation jewelry and jewelry made from a fingerprint. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Cremation Nation

With almost half of all Americans choosing cremation and more then 60% of them choosing scattering as a final disposition, the sky is the limit!  Or the garden, the sea, the mountains, or the golf course depending on people’s preferences.

It’s a good thing so many Americans are choosing cremation for their dearly departed. The new options for memorializing ‘ashes’ would make some of them turn in their graves.

By Tai Moses

Americans are Scattering to The Wind....

WE WERE SCATTERING my father’s ashes. Ostensibly, that’s what we were doing. None of us had ever scattered ashes before, and no instruction manual came with the plastic urn (which in its army-green rectangularity resembled a C-ration box), so we were proceeding at an awkward clip.

First off, we didn’t have adequate ash-scattering paraphernalia. Always have the right tools for the job, my father once told me. I had stopped at a supermarket and bought a sleeve of paper cups. Now we all stood around gripping them with sweaty palms, wondering who would be the first to open the C-ration box and scoop up his or her portion of cremains.

Our lack of familiarity with ritual, especially the rites and ceremonies connected with death, added to our unease, and it occurred to me later that this might be one reason why so many people skip the scattering and keep the box in the closet.

Awkward as the aftermath may be, the choice to cremate is becoming increasingly popular as our living reality shapes our dying habits. Families whose members were once laid to rest in the same patch of ground for generations have lost their attachments to the land, as well as to the past. Possibly somewhere in Romania, there is an abandoned Jewish graveyard that holds the ancestors of my father’s family. My father was born in Brooklyn. His mother is buried among strangers in Staten Island and his father’s grave is somewhere in Southern California. His sister’s ashes were scattered near San Francisco. America is our family burial plot. In his book The Undertaking, poet and funeral director Thomas Lynch observes that “One of the obvious attractions of cremation is that it renders our dead somehow more portable, less ‘stuck in their ways,’ more like us, you know, scattered.”

TODAY, Forty Percent Americans choose cremation for themselves or their loved ones. In California, Arizona and Florida, where most of the residents originally came from someplace else, people are cremated at twice the national rate, and among the nomadic population of the Bay Area, more than 70 percent of the deceased are cremated.

Until last year, California was the only state in which it was illegal to freely scatter ashes. State law allowed for cremated remains to be buried or scattered in cemeteries, brought home or scattered at sea at least three miles offshore. The relaxing of the law–ashes can now be scattered on land and at sea as long as they’re 3 miles away from the shoreline–has resulted in a sort of entrepreneurial free-for-all, with people thinking up increasingly creative things to do with human remains.

Karen Leonard was research assistant to Jessica Mitford, the funeral industry gadfly who wrote The American Way of Death. Now executive director of Redwood Funeral Society in Sonoma County, Leonard finds the cremation trend a positive one. Americans, she says, are under less pressure to abide by the manufactured rituals of a funeral home.

“Now people have the freedom to do whatever they want,” she muses. “The nice thing about cremation ashes is, unlike a body, you can do a number of things. There’s only one thing you can do with a body. A lot of people divvy up the remains and everyone gets to create their own rituals, which makes it incredibly individualistic and personal.

“I’ve been to some really far-out memorials,” Leonard continues. “Anything you can think of can be done. That’s all because we’ve been able to break the funeral industry’s stranglehold over cremation.”

Formerly the most no-frills method of committing human remains to eternity, cremation has become the vehicle for some unique procedures from the beautiful to the bizarre, depending upon one’s taste. And as sometimes happens when people become unmoored from convention, their newly fashioned customs take on elements of the absurd. Our ancestors would be spinning in their urns if they knew what was being done with their cremated brethren.

In the past year alone, the U.S. Patent Office has granted 41 patents involving human cremains, among them inventor David Sturino’s football helmet-shaped crematory urn. In his patent application, Sturino argued that even in death, people want their individuality to show: “If given the opportunity, it is believed that many individuals would choose to identify their cremation ashes as those of a football fan for eternity,” he wrote.

The indusrty has gotten creative in their cremation urn offerings. Some “alternative remembrance” urns double as jewelry boxes, picture frames, jewelry to hold ashes and clocks. Others can be fashioned on a customer’s specifications; one customer, whose husband had been a bowling fanatic, asked for an urn that incorporated a bowling pin. Lynch wrote that one of his clients had him place her husband’s ashes in an empty whiskey bottle, which she then had wired as a lamp. “He always said I really turned him on,” she explained.

DEATH IS BY NATURE untidy. It begins and ends with clutter, physical and psychological. The beauty of cremation is that it reduces people to a size positively Lilliputian and makes them eminently transportable. Still, practical problems do arise. This must have been what Douglas Casimir was thinking about when he dreamed up the dissolvable urn (U.S. Patent #5,774,958), which negates the necessity for mourners to have any contact with the ashes during scattering. Relatives can simply heave the biodegradable scattering urn, ashes and all, into the deep and it will dissolve, relegating the remains to the water.

As Casimir commented (perhaps from personal experience?), “When the urn is opened and ashes are sprinkled upon the sea, the wind often causes the ashes to blow about and the ashes sometimes get blown upon the deceased’s relatives who are sprinkling the ashes, thereby causing an unpleasant experience for those involved.”

A dissolvable urn would have been of great help to Dave Eggers, author of the recent memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The sad slapstick saga of what to do with his mother’s ashes is a motif that runs throughout Eggers’ book. He finally decides to throw the cremains into Lake Michigan, all the while torturing himself with the fear that he has made the wrong decision, that this last gesture to his mother–the scattering, the lake–is somehow not enough, is inadequate.

Upon opening the cardboard box, he finds to his consternation that the ashes look like cat litter or “little rocks, pebbles, Grape-Nuts, in white and black and gray.” Then he spills some of them on the ground and tries to kick them into the water with his foot, but, “Should I really be kicking my mother’s ashes? … I stand up quickly and throw, this time some of the cremains sticking to my palm, which is now sweaty … Should I throw them all in one place, or redirect the throws each time? Should I hold on to some for later, to deposit elsewhere?”

Desperately, he empties the last ashes from the bag into the lake, “like shaking a goldfish out of a Baggie. … This is what it’s come to–winging her remains into the lake.” Now with the introduction of scattering tubes, the process is much easier

"Life Tree's"

LIKE MANY PEOPLE who die suddenly, my father had left no instructions for what he wanted done with his remains. We decided to put his ashes under a eucalyptus tree along the Santa Monica path where he had often liked to walk. He would become part of the tree, its soil and roots, its limbs and leaves. Now the people at the “Life Tree Farm” have made it simple for all those attending a memorial event can get a tree to plant as a true living memorial.

I was in charge of doling out the ashes. Everyone ended up with uneven shares and I noticed people sneaking furtive peeks at one another’s cups. I confess, I was glad of the chance to see my father’s ashes, even to touch and smell them (they’re odorless). They were undeniably his–the box was stamped indelibly with his name–and in the feeling of unreality that followed his death, they provided a much-needed focal point. Sure, I recognized the painful absurdity of the whole procedure. It even got tiresome to keep alluding to how entertained my dad would have been by the bumbling farewell we gave him. One would think our little scattering ceremony was watched over by a grinning Cheshire father, his face etched with a permanent expression of mirth.

One by one we emptied our Dixie cups under the tree. Everyone had a different system. My brother shook the ashes energetically out of his cup; I turned mine upside down and let the ashes fall in a blurred stream onto the ground.

I expected them to sift ethereally away into fairy dust, but they just sat, lumpen and gray atop the leaves. It looked like someone had just cleaned out a Weber. The next day, and the next, the cremains sat there. Finally, a week later, it rained, and they began to disperse into the soil.

MY SON PASSED away four years ago last week and his body was cremated. He asked me before his death to put his cremains into a volcano. This sounds strange but his reasoning was sound. He said he did not want to be put in the soil because worms and insects would eat him and he did not want to be put into water to be fishfood. He wanted a volcano so he could become part of a rock and stay on the earth for centuries. Do you know of any active volcano where this is possible?”

The question comes as no surprise to the discussion list moderator of the website VolcanoWorld (http://volcano.
und.nodak.edu/), who has himself “had similar thoughts about becoming part of a volcanic rock.” He directs the bereaved father to Kilauea in Hawaii, where he believes it would be possible to pour ashes directly onto molten lava, where they could harden with the rock.

For many, co-mingling one’s remains with the natural world brings a sense of symbolic immortality. Volcanoes would probably be more popular among the dead if they were as accessible as, say, the ocean. A majority of people request that their cremains be put in the sea, scattered from private planes like the one owned by Scott Dixon of Ashes by the Bay in Monterey. “It’s an increasingly popular trend,” he says. But for ocean lovers who want their cremains permanently entombed in a lasting monument, there are other options.

A Reno, Nev., company called LegaSEA makes an oceanic time capsule that doubles as a memorial urn. The LegaSEA memorial, fashioned of bronze and glass, is deployed from a boat into international waters. There it descends to the seafloor and rests for eternity, or until it’s discovered by future generations, “making one’s life the subject of archaeological interest possibly thousands of years into the future.”

Another ocean option comes from Georgia-based Eternal Reefs, Inc., which will “turn your loved one’s ashes into a living coral reef.” Eternal Reefs mixes cremains into concrete to create artificial reef modules, made to last 500 years or more, which are placed in locations around the world where the reef could use a little help. Loved ones can be on hand when the reef balls are deployed and can also charter a dive boat and visit the memorial reef later. Once the modules are put in place they’re there to stay, creating new habitats for sea life.

Options like this make the dead not only more interesting, but useful. In some cases they can even be decorative. An outfit called The Ancestral Tree causes the dead to practically rise from their ashes: its “Eternal Bonsai” are planted in a mix of soil and human cremains. The process raises thorny questions, however. What if the tree/person gets sick? Imagine the attendant emotional trauma if the bonsai succumbed to some miniaturized arboreous affliction.

Without tombs or headstones, those mute reminders of mortality, how do we remember our absent, ashen dead? Human beings like dates. They serve to frame a life, the way a picture frame encloses a photograph of a beloved. Undertaker Thomas Lynch recalls how a friend’s widow asked him to scatter her husband’s ashes in a favorite fishing spot. But when Lynch paddles downstream, ashes by his side in a Stanley thermos (less conspicuous than an urn, the widow thought), he finds he can’t fulfill the request. Instead he buries the cremains, thermos and all, under a tree on the riverbank. “I piled stones there and wrote his name and dates on a paper, which I put in a flybox and hid among the stones. I wanted a place that stood still to remember him at,” he writes.

The need to create something to help the living remember the dead inspired Mill Valley architect William E. Cullen. Cullen, president of Relict Memorials Inc., invented and patented a process that turns cremated human remains into granitelike tablets. To the tablets he affixes bronze plaques inscribed with names and dates. The tablets contain the integrated remains for hundreds of years, and since they weigh only 20 pounds or so, can be moved easily from one location to another.

Cullen perfected his technique on roadkill, and eventually made his first Relict for–and from–his son’s cremains. “I needed some sense of my son’s presence,” he explained. “To scatter his ashes would be as though he had never existed.” The younger Cullen’s Relict is in the memorial garden of the family’s church.

Recently the media reported that a Kentucky bookbinder and printer was mixing cremains with pulp to produce the pages of bound volumes called “bibliocadavers.” But when I called Timothy Hawley Books in Louisville, the eponymous proprietor laughed sheepishly and explained that it was a jest that got out of hand. “I’m a bookseller,” Hawley said. “I just put some stupid joke in the front of each of my catalogues.”

Nonetheless, Hawley’s hoax generated enough serious interest to indicate that there’s a real market out there for bibliocadavers. The process was reported in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. Hawley was also contacted by a woman in Wisconsin who is starting a business doing different types of memorializations and wanted to use him as an independent contractor. She already had several customers lined up who were interested in becoming bibliocadavers. Hawley had to turn her down.

“It wouldn’t even work,” he said, “because of the paper chemistry–the ashes would not bond with the paper pulp.”

Maybe not, but what about another element of a book? Mark Gruenwald, the late Marvel comic-book writer, came up with an artistic use for his earthly remains. As per his request, he was cremated and his ashes were combined with ink and used to print a special edition of his comic book series Squadron Supreme. “He remained true to his passion for comics, as he has truly become one with the story,” his widow wrote in the book’s foreword.

Cremation ashes have even joined the ranks of interactive multimedia. Ohio-based Leif Technologies makes a “Viewology cremation urn” that not only holds the ashes of the deceased but is equipped with a flat screen monitor with a video slide show and biographical narrative about the departed.

THE ETERNAL ASCENT Society is one of many companies that have flourished advertising their services on the web. Eternal Ascent claims to hold the only patent in the world “for cremated remains put inside a very large balloon and airlifted to the heavens,” says Joanie West, 62, president and owner.

Three years ago, West and her husband, who own a balloon and gift shop in Crystal River, Fla., began marketing the process she describes as “a beautiful way to enclose a memory.” Cremains, or a portion of them, are deposited inside a biodegradable balloon which is inflated in a specially designed acrylic chamber. Balloon and chamber are transported to the release site, where the mourners have gathered. When the balloon is released, West explains that it ascends five miles into the atmosphere, freezes (it’s 40 degrees below zero up there) and fractures into millions of pieces.

“You look up and you see a rainbow or a sunrise or a sunset or a cloud and you think of that person,” says West. The Eternal Ascent Society has been so popular, inundated with requests for services from people all over the country, that West and her husband are preparing to sell franchises in other states, with California first on the list. “California should be a wonderful place,” says West. “They’re ready for it.”

For many people, even the sky isn’t the limit. In fact, some of the spectacles one can purchase seem to be attempts to bypass the unpleasant business of bereavement. Death doesn’t have to be a sorrowful event, they imply; it can be entertaining–a Deathstravaganza!

Celebrate Life!, in Lakeside, Calif., makes specially modified fireworks shells (patent pending) for cremains dispersal over the ocean, accompanied by a musical theme. You can almost hear a note of pleading desperation in the text of the company’s brochure: “What if instead of a hole in the ground there was fire in the sky?”

Celebrate Life! has all sorts of pre-packaged pyrotechnic celebrations that are customized for deceased individuals, veterans, children and couples. There are even special “ethnic” celebrations. “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” comes with a display of green fireworks and a rendition of the Irish-American ballad.

The ultimate send-off comes from the Houston, Texas, firm Celestis, Inc., “the world’s leading provider of post-cremation memorial spaceflight services.” It costs about $5,000 to have Celestis put your loved one’s cremains–or a vial containing a symbolic portion of them–into orbit around the earth. After several years, the Celestis memorial satellite re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizes, “blazing like a shooting star in final tribute.”

In 1997, Celestis made headlines when it successfully launched a portion of the cremated remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and counterculture icon Timothy Leary into low earth orbit aboard a Pegasus rocket.

BUT SHOOTING STARS, fireworks and gigantic balloons bring only temporary respite from the emptiness of loss. As the writer Richard Brautigan said, death can’t really be camouflaged: always at the end of the words, someone is dead.

Later the day of the scattering of the ashes, I heard myself utter this melodramatic sentence: “I buried my father today.” The inadequacies of language–after all, I hadn’t buried him. We had left him, or what was left of him in his reduced circumstances, somewhere outside in the gathering dusk in Santa Monica. In fact, we had unwittingly violated the part of California law that stipulates scattered ashes should not be distinguishable to the public. I conjured a scene: A jogger kneels to tie her shoe and sprints off with some of my father’s ashes in the tread of her Nikes.

For a long while I toyed with the idea of getting a plaque on a cremation monument bench for him, someplace I could visit, something solid and immutable, with writing on it. A “Beloved Father,” a favorite quotation, some dates. A chunk of real estate. In the end, I settled for a sort of renewable relic: a scrap of the eucalyptus tree. I went back and plucked a leaf, and when time reduces it to dust, I will go back and get another one.

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Cremation Jewelry Provides Thoughtful Keepsakes

Cremation jewelry comes in all shapes and sizes, including traditional style necklaces, dichroic glass, rings, and even custom cremation crystals and diamonds.

Cremation ashes are traditionally scattered, buried or kept in an urn, but sometimes it is helpful to have a small keepsake with which to remember loved ones. Such an object can be very helpful throughout the grieving process and beyond. Our Cremation Jewelry for Ashes is designed so as to preserve the memory of a loved one in a very real and beautiful memento. We offer a variety of necklaces and pendants, all of which either have inner compartments meant for ashes or actually incorporate the ashes into the piece itself. The jewelry only requires a bit of ashes, so the rest of them can be scattered, kept in an urn or buried.

We are proud to offer a wide selection of cremation jewelry keepsakes, with a variety of shapes, styles and materials to choose from. Some examples include Traditional Collection, which features religious symbols, and our Nature Inspired Pendants, which aim to emulate by the beauty and joy found in the natural world around us. We are even able to create a unique diamond using cremation ashes. Regardless of style, all of our jewelry is elegantly and tastefully designed, ensuring a dignified future for a loved one’s ashes.

Since our Cremation Jewelry for Ashes is designed to help the bereaved cope during the grieving process, its functionality is not limited to cremated remains; our pieces can also be used for other items of emotional significance such as hair, flower petals or dirt.

As with all of our products, we hope that our Cremation Jewelry for Ashes provides some comfort to those coping with the death of a loved one. Incorporating ash into the pieces helps to preserve a soul’s beauty, and speaks to emotional and aesthetic considerations simultaneously, all the while giving the bereaved something to remember the departed by. Although the grieving process is never easy, such a talisman can be a helpful touch.

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Cremation Jewelry

Cremation jewelry is nothing new, for years people have used lockets to hold a small amount of ashes or hair. The concept of holding onto something personal of a deceased loved one adds special meaning to the jewelry. Although most cremation jewelry can still hold hair or flower petals and earth, most people choose to have the jewelry hold ashes.

Cremation Jewelry comes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes; it's easy to find a design that fits the memory of your loved one perfectly.

Cremation jewelry became more widely available in the early 90’s when it was first marketed through funeral homes. Because Cremation Solutions is a web based company, we can offer a much larger selection then funeral homes. Our overhead is lower so we may offer better prices on our cremation jewelry. Cremation Solutions not only carries our own line of cremation jewelry but also work with several US based artist so we can offer our customers with a wide variety of hand crafted cremation jewelry custom made in the USA.

Most of our cremation jewelry is easily filled by the customer. Each piece comes with simple step by step directions to ad a small amount of ashes to a hollow chamber in the jewelry. A small screw is removed and a mini funnel guides the ashes into the chamber. Then just put the screw back in the jewelry piece, a drop of glue can be used for a permanent seal.

We have recently added a cremation jewelry piece to our fingerprint jewelry line. It combines the popular use of a person’s fingerprint on a pendant, but also has an inner chamber for cremation ashes. Some of our jewelry is made with the ashes being a part of the piece. With cremation jewelry beads and glass pendants the ashes are added to the jewelry while in a hot molten state. Cremation crystals and cremation diamonds are actually created with elements of the cremation ashes. When this type of cremation jewelry is ordered, we mail you a kit to safely mail some ashes directly to us.

One of the reasons cremation jewelry has become so popular is the continued growth in scattering ashes. People like the idea of our physical elements being returned to nature but also like the idea of retaining some of the ashes to always hold a part of the earthly remains close to themselves. Cremation jewelry and keepsake urns are the perfect solutions to satisfy both needs. Even when not scattering, cremation jewelry can and comfort and a sense of closeness that survivors need.

Thumbprint Cremation Jewelry lets you remember your loved one by keeping a unique imprint them by you side.

Jewelry for ashes give us a sense of connection that other jewelry just can’t provide. It’s being able to hold something sacred and very personal close to your heart and a sign of our continued love and devotion. Cremation jewelry is something that is often shared among family members that also reinforces the bond between surviving family members. For example a group of grandchildren will feel and be more connected when each is wearing a pendant containing grandma’s ashes. When cremation jewelry also takes the form of a religious or spiritual symbol, it can help reinforce our beliefs as well as ad a sense of being.

When I was a funeral director and cremation jewelry was first introduced in the 90’s, I must admit I was a skeptic and did not think many people would want jewelry that contained ashes. Yes, I thought it was a gimmick to help increase sales. My mind was soon changed after the first few families received their cremation jewelry. When I ran into one women in the supermarket she confessed and thanked me for the now very special piece of jewelry she now always wears as a pendant. Like myself, she too was skeptical even when she made the purchase. Now she says the cremation jewelry somehow makes her feel closer to the memory of her lost son. She picked a dolphin because he loved the ocean and she scattered his ashes in a favorite fishing area. Her two daughters also wear a cremation jewelry pendant in memory of their brother.

Since then I have heard hundreds of similar stories of peoples experience with cremation jewelry. I now have reverted to a favorite philosophy when introduced to new memorial choices, and that is, if it feels right then it is the right thing to do.

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