Keeping the Memories Alive

For many years, as the kids were growing up, I tried to find ways to preserve the memories they created. We made paintings with handprint and footprints, we made Christmas ornaments with impressions, we took lots of photos. I have a hard time throwing anything away that says "I love you" or any nice drawing they've made me. I'm afraid to lose the memory to the ravages of time. Flash forward to today when I took that idea which I now had the ability to be able to do something about!

I took a card that my daughter Lily had made me to cheer me up and put it on an insulated tumbler to be able to be reminded of it day in and day out.

Now that I realized I could do this for myself, I thought that this would be a great service to be able to offer others! My hope is to be able to provide durable and affordable mediums for people to be able to preserve a cherished memory, whatever that might be. This would be great for children's artwork, your favorite photo, handwriting from a loved one, a wedding sentiment, a gift for a teacher, artwork you've created or even your custom company logo without having to order a flat of them for hundreds of dollars.

I have taken this as an opportunity to explore different mediums with this technique, having already done so on shirts. I have created memorial pillows to help ease some of the grief and panic my children experienced when they could no longer hug their beloved dog who passed away. I created a throw pillow cover with a photograph snapped during Christmas festiviites for a gift. Ii've created custom mousepads for myself and teachers. I have created a mug with our logo on it for promotional purposes.

I am excited to share this with some others to spread some joy! I have reached out to a few people that have lost loved ones and had them send me artwork they would like to cherish (through a photograph or scan as I did with Lily's card) so that they can experience the joy of having the item represented near by without daming the original. We squeeze our dog pillows a lot around here!

We will continue to explore new ideas and would love to hear from you! If you could preserve any memory what would it be? What would you put it on? So far I have had success with shirts, mousepads, tumblers, ceramic mugs, keychains and coozies. I look forward to continue exploring this medium and bringing this joy to others!