Making the Perfect Dog Sympathy Gifts

I started out years ago making a few designs of dog and cat silhouettes with welded on stakes. My background is in art and sculpture so I designed the cutouts to be decorations. They had a rusted finish, a heart cutout, and I tied solid copper bows around their necks. Once people started to ask about personalization I realized that they were being purchased as memorials and sympathy gifts and not just for decoration. Ultimately I had around 100 designs and also made them with painted finishes.

More recently I started making dog and cat memorial ornaments. I started off using the same designs I used for the garden stakes but offered the regular dog silhouettes along with angel winged versions specifically meant to be sympathy gifts or memorials. The design catalog expanded to over 150 designs and I now make nearly all popular breeds and a lot of more obscure ones as well.

Personalization is always important with a memorial of any kind so I had to figure out how to go about doing that. Originally the idea was to make them so people could attach their dog's tag to them. I still make them that way and include an extra piece of twine just for that purpose. Putting an actual name somehow on the ornaments was the goal though. I just had to figure out how.

There are only so many ways to add a name to hard steel. It could be painted, stamped, or engraved. I wanted something permanent so painting was out, plus it would be nearly impossible to hand paint a name legibly and cleanly. That is the same issue with engraving. You can engrave a name by hand but it isn't pretty. A cnc machine can be set up to do engraving but I really wanted it to be hand done. I've always liked the look of hand stamped pet tags because they have character, an imperfectness that makes them perfect. Every single one will be unique. I think that is important.

It took quite a while and literally hundreds of hours of practice, but I eventually figured out how to hand stamp these ornaments exactly the way I wanted. Usually when you see something stamped, it is made out of a soft metal, like copper or aluminum. A lot of jewelry is hand stamped, but it is a soft metal, like silver. It is totally different to stamp a hard steel. To stamp deeply requires many tons of force and special stamps.

There wasn't a tool or machine I could buy that was designed to do this so I designed my own. Stamping looks like a simple thing, and it does have a very simplistic look, but the process is rather involved. I am proud to offer the stamping service on all of my ornaments. Most people purchasing these as a sympathy gift opt to have a name stamped and for the $5 cost, it makes these a very sentimental gift for the loss of a dog.

I'll put the link below to all my current dog ornament designs. They are available with or without angel wings and they can be stamped with up to 8 characters. If you have any questions please let me know.

Richard Walker - artist

Dog Sympathy Gifts

New Cat Memorials and Cat Loss Gifts

For the longest time I was just making just three cat memorial designs. Two sitting designs and one standing with its front legs in the air. Each one of these is meant to be a rather generic silhouette and each has a different body type.

Lately I have been working on some new cat memorial ornaments. They come with or without angel wings so they can be used as a sympathy gift or simply as a gift for someone who loves cats. I make a lot of them for holidays and birthdays. Stamping is available and up to 8 characters will fit on them.

My newest designs are more breed specific. There is an Abyssinian, Bengal, Birman, Maine Coone, Persian, Ragdoll, Siamese, and Sphynx.

I often recommend taking a look at all my designs before making a decision. Ultimately the goal is to have an ornament that looks as much like your cat or your recipient's cat as possible and sometimes one that looks right may be considered a different breed. When I ship them out I just include some care instructions, there is no mention of a specific breed. I can also include a gift note in the box.

If you would like to take a look at my new cat memorial designs please click the link below and please let me know if you have any questions.

Richard Walker – artist

Cat Memorial – Cat Loss Gift

What Makes a Great Pet Loss Gift?

Affordability

The first consideration when giving someone a pet sympathy gift is probably going to be the price. There are a lot of great ideas out there, ranging from a simple card, to flowers, to memorials that can be placed in the yard. Obviously the cheapest would be a text or phone call, but you will probably be doing that anyway.

I wanted to make something that would be meaningful, well made, but very affordable as well so I try to keep the prices as low as possible. In addition to the price, you always have to pay attention to the shipping. Because of the small size and relatively light weight, ornaments are $3 to ship. In comparison, a $20 bouquet of flowers can cost $15 to ship.

Handmade Craftsmanship

I feel like the most meaningful sympathy gifts are those that have at least some hand made element and craftsmanship. It can be difficult to tell, but most gifts of this type are produced on a mass scale with a lot of automation. Technology is great and machines can make amazing items all by themselves, but I have tried to incorporate modern technology with craftsmanship into my ornaments.

I was fortunate to be able to build a plasma cnc that I use to cut out all my designs. While it does a great job, they are far from finished after the initial cutting. Each piece goes through multiple steps of cleaning as well as hand grinding to perfect the design and remove sharp edges and corners. Many people opt for personalization and all the metal stamping is also done by hand.

Made in the USA and Direct from the Artist

It's getting more difficult to tell what is made here and what is made overseas. A lot of the equipment used to make things in the United States is also being used in other parts of the world. The difference is their labor costs are much lower. Often the quality is different as well though. I see this a lot with jewelry type memorial gifts. For example, there are American made hand cut silver pendants that are $80 along side very similar looking ones being offered for under $10.

If you see a lot of people offering very similar looking or identical items at a very low price point, they are probably buying them in bulk and importing them versus making them. Unique, more expensive items have a higher price point for a reason. With higher quality materials and skilled labor, they cost a lot more to produce. The end result is worth the added cost and would be obvious when seeing the products side by side.

Personalization

I have made pet loss gifts of various types for a few years and from the very beginning customers were asking if the memorials could be personalized. I did not offer the option initially, because I didn't know how to be honest, but I eventually figured it out and now most ornaments are stamped with a name.

The challenge with handmade items is that adding a name is not easy, especially on steel. It took me weeks of practice and experimenting with different tools and techniques to be able to stamp a name into these ornaments. Getting the spacing of the letters just right was a huge challenge because each letter is stamped individually and the stamp prevents you from being able to see the relation with the other letters. Not to mention the fact that special stamps are needed because the steel is so hard and the letters must be pounded in with enormous pressure to get a deep and visible letter. It is real easy to make mistakes and I have piles of mis-stamped ornaments laying around that I now use for practice.

Something to Keep Forever

There are plenty of gifts that either do not hold up over time, or they are just temporary by nature, like a bouquet of flowers. I have always tried to make memorials that do last and can be kept forever, while often still being priced lower than gifts that may be enjoyed for a few days.

There are a lot of pet loss gifts available and I really appreciate you taking the time to look at the ones that I make. If you have any questions feel free to let me know.

Thanks

Richard

Dog Pet Loss Gifts

Cat Pet Loss Gifts