Tributes & Keepsakes
Maybe you're thinking about your own. The stories you don't want flattened into a line in an obituary. Or maybe it's someone you love, and a photo on the mantel isn't enough to hold everything they were. Either one brings you to the same place. We sit down together and make something meaningful.
Legacy · Tributes and keepsakes
What lasts is how they lived.
Maybe you’re thinking about your own. The stories you don’t want flattened into a line in an obituary. Or maybe it’s someone you love, and a photo on the mantel isn’t enough to hold everything they were. Either one brings you to the same place. We sit down together and make something real out of a life.
A will tells people what someone had. It doesn’t tell them who they were.
Most tributes get the facts right and miss the person completely. Born here, worked there, survived by these people. All true, and none of it them. What people actually hold onto is smaller and stranger than that. A particular way of saying hello. What someone’s hands do when they’re thinking. The line that comes out every single time, the one nobody wants to lose.
That’s what we build around. Not a record of a life. The particular, specific person, whether it’s you or someone you love, caught in the details the paperwork never keeps.
Something you can hold.
A few of the things I’ve made with people.
- A photo mosaic portrait, 24 by 36, framed. One large image of their face, built from a hundred smaller photos from their life. Across the room it’s them. Up close it’s everything.
- Memorial photo books and videos. A book of the photos worth keeping, or a video montage that plays at the service and lives on their phones after.
- Their handwriting kept. A grocery list, a signed card, an “I love you,” turned into a print, a magnet, or something you can wear.
- Recorded stories. We sit with them while they’re here and get the stories down in their own voice, then turn it into a small book.
- Recipe cards. Her butter tarts in her own hand, printed so the family can actually cook from them.
- Artwork. A framed piece made from their handwriting, a place they loved, or a portrait, for a wall you walk past every day.
- Books. Their letters, their stories, or a life written down and printed as a real book the family can pull off the shelf.
- A quilt or a couple of pillows made from their clothes, with a local seamstress.
- Old photos restored, framed and ready for the wall.
If you’ve got something in your heart that isn’t on this list, that’s usually the best one. Tell me and we’ll figure out how to make it.
Memorial favours
A small piece to send home.
Sometimes a family wants to send people home with a small piece of the person. Not because anyone expects it, and not one more thing you have to pull off. Just a quiet way to let the people who came carry a little of them back out into their own lives.
If that feels right to you, we make small favours for a service. A magnet with their face on it. Seed packets of the flower she grew every summer, so it comes up in gardens all over the Island next year. Their recipe printed on a card, the one everybody asked for and nobody could get right. A teacup from her collection with a tag. A little cloth bag of something that was theirs to give.
You tell me who they were, and we build the favour around that. And if it’s not for you, that’s completely fine too.
These magnets give back.
Order a set of memorial magnets and half of what you pay goes straight to Hospice PEI. So the thing people take home also gives back to the place that sits with families here when it matters most.
Button-style magnets, custom designed, with a frameable photo backing. Choose 2 by 3 inches or 2.5 by 2.5 inches. $10 each. Email to order.
Something that keeps going.
Some people want the thing they leave to keep doing something after they’re gone. That’s a different kind of project, and I can help you set it up.
A named scholarship at a school that meant something. A gift left to a cause they gave their life to, written into a will properly so it actually happens. A bench, a garden, a room, a tree with their name on it, somewhere people can go and sit. A memorial fund that keeps giving in their name every year.
I’m not a lawyer or a financial advisor, and I won’t pretend to be. What I do is help you get clear on what you want it to say and do, then work alongside the people who make it legal and official. You bring the meaning. We bring in the right expertise.
Not sure where to start? Begin with a free conversation.
Thirty minutes, nothing to prepare. There’s no wrong time to reach out.