Celebrating Life Through Images: The Transformative Effect of Printed Photos on Memorials

Death is an unfortunate part of life, but for many, people are choosing to celebrate their loved one’s life instead of focusing on their demise. You know that the people you love will one day be gone, but that doesn’t mean that you have to forget them.

An urn with picture for human ashes allows you to:

• Remember your loved one
• Design a custom urn with picture options

UV printed photos on memorials will flood you with memories of your loved one and is an option that is now available with our Embrace Portrait collection.

Benefits of Printed Photos on Urns

Customized urns for human ashes that use UV printing technology offer benefits that you won’t find with other urns. You benefit from:

• A true photo of your loved one printed right on the urn that holds their ashes
• Weather-resistant printing
• Fade-resistant printing
• Environmentally friendly printing option

UV printed urns are resistant, dry fast and capture photos in great detail due to the fast-drying process not available with non-UV printing technology.

How the Process Works

UV photo urns offer limitless, customizable options to remember your loved one. We're the only brand in the industry – at the time of writing this article – that is offering custom urns with pictures.

Why?

Because the process is intense. While we discuss UV printing more in this blog post, the general idea is:

• State-of-the-art UV technology is used to capture the vibrant details of your loved one’s face.
• Ultra-violent, cured ink is used for fade-resistant results.
• You supply the image, custom lettering, color, font color, size and style – we take care of the rest.

Cured ink is placed on the exterior of the urn while the UV light cures and dries the ink instantly. Fast-drying processes allow the ink to offer precision lines and shading without the risk of smearing or dripping.

Fine details are captured with the UV printing process, and you benefit from a picture-perfect reminder of your loved one.

The Embrace Portrait Collection

Our Embrace Portrait collection is a beautiful way to memorialize lost loved ones and preserve their image.

These adult urns can be customized to include your loved one’s photo along with personalized engravings. The simple yet elegant design is timeless and will forever serve as a wonderful memorial.

Our Portrait urns are available in a variety of colors and finishes, allowing you to choose an option that best suits your loved one’s personality. Two popular options include:

Cobalt Blue Portrait Cremation Urn - Male

Our cobalt blue portrait metal urn has a deep, glossy finish and elegant design to create a meaningful tribute. Blue represents freedom, devotion and loyalty, which makes this urn a fitting choice for your loved one.

Along with a photo, you can customize this urn with engraved text. Choose from single-sided engravings or double-sided.

Purple Portrait Cremation Urn – Female

If you’re looking for meaningful urns for mom, our purple Portrait cremation urn is a lovely choice. The beautiful purple finish contrasts nicely against the brushed pewter band just below the threaded lid.

This urn has a classic silhouette and a durable design, so your loved one’s memorial will last a lifetime.

Other colors in the Embrace Portrait collection include:

• Black
• Charcoal
• Green
• Yellow
• Orange
• Teal
• Cherry purple
• Red
• White
• Pearl candy red
• More

8 Ways to Remember a Loved One

Whether you choose urns for ashes or you remember your loved one by having a celebration in their honor, it’s a nice way to reminisce about the person and what they meant to you. We're going to share a few of the leading ways that people choose to remember a loved one, starting with something that we know better than most.

1. Cremation Urn

Urns for adult ashes (or children) can honor the person who passes in ways that a burial cannot. You can choose one of our Embrace Portrait urns, which are what we’ve been discussing already: photo urns for human ashes.

UV printing and laser text engraving allow us to offer state-of-the-art urns that you won’t find anywhere else.

If you prefer not to have a portrait urn, you can choose from:

• Cremation Urn
• Cremation Jewelry (pedals, butterflies, hearts, countless others)
• Our best sellers

Personalized urns are your loved one’s final resting place – make them special.

2. Support a Cause in Their Honor

Your loved one is no longer here, but your contributions can help them make a lasting difference. For example, you can always opt to donate to:

• Local food banks
• Homeless shelters
• Causes

If your loved one died from lung cancer, you can donate to research groups that use the money to find new treatments or cures. Your contribution may help fund a cure that saves other people’s lives.

3. Build Your Own Living Reminder

Living reminders are a fancy way of creating a space that you can enter and think about your loved one. You can create a garden (more on that below), but you can also create other reminders, such as:

• Walkways
• Benches
• Spaces they loved to be in

And after you have your space mapped out, you can use human ashes urns to sprinkle some ashes in this area. If the person loved animals, you could make a beautiful fenced-in area with strategic plants to attract birds and other wildlife.

You can also follow the same idea for domesticated animals, such as dogs. In this space, you can create your own flower garden that reminds you of the person or anything special that reminds you of them.

4. Plant a Tree in Their Honor

Tree dedications can be purchased, or you can plant the tree on your own. When you “purchase” a tree, you’re paying to replant a tree in someone else’s honor. Arbor Day Foundation plants memorial trees.

If you do want to plant the tree on your own or the deceased person’s property, you can.

A lot of people will plant the tree on their own property and add some of the person’s ashes into the soil. But you need to use a very small amount – or none at all – depending on the soil condition.

Human ashes have high pH levels that many plants cannot thrive in when levels are too high.

If you do want to use ashes in the soil, you can buy mixtures that will dilute the sodium in the ashes, allowing it to nourish the ground without negative side effects.

5. Host a Celebration of Life

A celebration of life is a traditional way to remember those whom we’ve lost. It’s an opportunity for friends and loved ones to gather together, share memories and celebrate the person’s life.

When planning a celebration of life:

• Choose a meaningful location
• Collect photos to display
• Create a playlist of their favorite music
• Start a group prayer or poem

A celebration of life should be positive and focused on all of the joy the person brought to everyone’s lives.

6. Create Art in Their Memory

Another lovely way to memorialize your loved one is to create a piece of art in their memory. This could be:

• A painted portrait
• Memorial-themed artwork, such as the sea and sand, angels or nature-inspired themes
• Glassworks or paintings created with their ashes

The wonderful thing about art is that you can proudly display it in your home without it being obvious that it’s a memorial.

7. Create a Remembrance Garden

A beautiful way to honor your loved one’s memory is to create a remembrance garden in your backyard. Find a quiet space in your yard and start transforming it into a place where you can sit and reflect.

You can create your garden however you wish, but some common elements in memory gardens include:

• A bench to sit and reflect on the person’s memory
• Flowers and evergreens
• Their favorite plants
• Statues or garden stones with their name

Add things that will remind you of your loved one and the memories you shared. Another beautiful thing about a garden is that it requires care and attention. Whenever you tend to this space, you’ll be reminded of your loved one and their memory will continue to live on.

8. Wear Cremation Jewelry

Cremation jewelry is a beautiful way to memorialize your loved one and always keep them close to your heart. These fine pieces of jewelry act as custom urns for ashes. They hold just a pinch of your loved one’s ashes, so you can carry them with you always.

Our collection of cremation jewelry includes a wide range of themes, from angel wings to dragonflies, roses, doves, paw prints and more. Choose from bracelets or necklaces, so you can find a piece of jewelry that fits your lifestyle and personal taste.

Final Thoughts

There are so many thoughtful ways to honor and memorialize our loved ones who have passed on, but one of the most beautiful options is an urn with pictures  and engravings. Our Embrace collection allows you to fully customize your urn with a photo of your lost loved one. UV printing ensures that the photo will last a lifetime, along with their memory.