Spirit Pieces Glass Art

Sympathy and Memorials for the Dearly Departed Pets and People

[spiritpieces]

We’re trying to figure out if this ring would be a nice cremation jewelry for men ring.  It’s been a challenge to find jewelry for guys as most of our settings need to be wider to allow us to add in the cremation ash and we get a lot of requests for thicker bands.   

What do you think, would you wear this memorial ring?   It’s Sterling Silver and the bezel is about 10mm wide.

[spiritpieces]

Flower Vase Memorial with Nightwirl Touchstone

I was shopping in HEB and saw a really nice vase and wanted to share a bit of an art project.   I took about 20' of brass wire and wire wrapped the bottom of the vase flange and then added on a small heart pendant.  Below that I took a night swirl touchstone and a bit of museum putty.  Making sure the surface of the vase was dry, I tacked on the touchstone under the heart to make this lovely vase into a memorial vase.

Cost of vase:  $15 Cost of wire: $2.50 Cost of flowers: $20 Cost of Nightswirl: $79

Another variation of this concept is hanging a pendant off of the vase; in this case I took about 10" of silver chain and a flower pendant.

Cost of vase:  $15 Cost of chain: $3.50 Cost of flowers: $20 Cost of Pendant: $76

Just one of the many ways you can work our pendants and touchstones into existing home decor themes.

[spiritpieces]

How Do They Do That? The Making Of Our Airships

We get a lot of questions regarding how our beautiful airships are created so we decided to write a blog entry regarding!  Our airship (and hot air balloon) line are produced by Greg, one of the artists we work with here at Spirit Pieces.  See Greg below - he says hi!  Well, he really can't talk, he's focusing on creating one of our airships!

So Greg is looking very stylish with those red glasses of his.  However, it's not just a fashion statement, they're made from Didymium glass.  Didymium is used by glass blowers as it filters out much of the infrared and near-red light.  Without them, all Greg would see is a really bright light and not much else.

He also can't say hello as he's holding a blow tube in his mouth.  We maybe he can mumble 'hllllllloooo' but not much else.  As he needs both hands to shape the glass, having a suspended blow tube is super useful.  Also I think it looks like a cigar and along with the beard and glasses makes me think Greg is secretly in ZZTop.

Speaking of the glass, you can see in the first picture a close up of the starting glass tube which already has the rippled texture of the Airships.  The glass is fired under a propane/oxygen flame to 1800 degrees which gets the glass all melty.  Depending how long and hot the ultimate flame is, this can effectively turn our tube into taffy but here it's just enough to be deformed by a pressurized airflow (hence the blow tube) and shaping tools.

This glass is the same type of glass used to make lab equipment, specifically borosilicate glass.  The equipment is the same to blow lab glass; in fact Greg produces quite a bit of lab equipment as well when he's not producing memorial art for us.  So if you're a mad scientist in need of lab equipment, Greg can definitely hook you up!

(more below...)

Once the shape of the airship is set, the end is heated and then snapped off with a graphite tool.  Molten glass is very sticky (you DO NOT want to get it on you) but it doesn't stick on Graphite at all; hence most glassworking tools are graphite in construction.  Incidentally, this is the end of the airship which receives the solid brass fins.  They're handmade using both modern and traditional techniques.

(more below...)

Once the fin side is finished, the nose portion (a much thinner section) is shaped after the airship is broken off a feeder glass rod.    The airship is then put into an annealer where it is cooled down from 1800 degrees to room temperature.  The process of annealing glass acts to relieve all the little stresses that built up during the glass blowing process.  Remember, glass is ultimately a liquid so it will flow at any temperature (more at 1800 degrees than 80 degrees of course.)  The annealing gives the glass a chance to re-organize itself into a much more stable form.

Don't believe me?  Find some really old glass windows (i.e. in old 400 year European churches) and check them out.  You'll notice the top of the windows are much thinner than the bottoms.  Yes, the glass is flowing down the window!

Once the airship is cooled down it's time to add the color!

(more below...)

OK, unfortunately we can't show you how the color is added as the technique is proprietary but we assure you it's cooler than chocolate covered jellybean ice cream!  All we can say it's a special finish hand-painted on, then fired at 1160F.  The final step is to add the wire-wrapping holding the hand-carved wood passenger pendant for the ashes.

Pretty neat right!  If you're interested, you can find out more information about the airships below by clicking on the picture or simply adding it to your cart.  We hope you enjoyed this entry to 'How Do They Do That' here at Spirit Pieces.

[spiritpieces]

New Hummingbird Sculptures - First Looks!

We're stoked to share first looks at our handmade glass hummingbird sculpture with a sterling silver keepsake pendant to hold ashes of your loved ones.  This will be available mid-September.  Email me at [email protected] with the subject line 'Hummingbird Sculpture' for a special 10% discount when this becomes available. 

Dimensions are about 4" by 5" by 3"; the silver keepsake pendant is about 1" in height (silver pendant designs will vary.)  Multiple colors available.

[spiritpieces]

Using Facebook Leads to Validate Facebook Audience Buying Intent

Facebook is a wonderful way to advertise ... if you like spending money like a sailor on shore leave.  With it's zillions of fans any budget can be spent quickly, and ineffectively, if not planned well.  One of the larger challenges is to figure out your demographic targeting.  With more traditional advertising platforms (i.e. Yellow Pages) it was the world or nothing; however online advertising often offers some level of demographic targeting.

Facebook takes demographic targeting to the nth level offering demographic targeting to very specific interests, i.e. 'Peanut Butter and Jelly.'  However, with so many interests groups to pick from it's super easy to get overwhelmed, pick anything remotely relevant, and end up with a campaign where 90% of your targeting is spent ineffectively.  So what's a business owner to do?

In my case, I decided that, after months of guesswork, a full fledged experiment in ad spending was needed to narrow down my most successful demographics for Spirit Pieces. 

To structure this experiment, I decided to split my grouping into 4 plus one control.  Each of the four represented a different time period in the buying cycle, the control was pretty much everyone between the ages of 25-65.  For each group, I sent up a separate campaign and ad group with a different saved audience.  Each one utilized the same image and roughly the same text. 

One of the biggest goals I had for this experiment was to understand buying intent of each of my groups. Spirit Pieces has some of the leading innovative artwork in the memorial space and it gets a lot of 'pretty shiny' clicks.  While it's wonderful to share the art on the site, at the end of the day I am a business and I need to convert.  Enter Facebook Leads

The first time I played around with Facebook Leads I wasn't that impressed.  My normal link click cost is usually under 20 cents; Facebook Leads cost me a lot more - not worth the cost.  However, to answer the question of buyer intent it was, and is, critical

I created a single lead form (shared between ads) asking not only the standard email, but what people were interested in and how soon they were planning to purchase.  Adding this question made this experiment worthwhile (more on that below.)

 To even out any daily bias, I ran the experiment for 2 weeks with a $10 daily budget; or $140 for each ad (OK, I lied, title should be 'What I learned spending $700 ...') 

Each day I watched the leads come in and resisted ending the experiment early.  I tried to spot early patterns in the data but after a few days stopped as I realize I was driving myself nuts. As with all things, it went very slowly and then it was over too fast. 

It took a bit of time to compile the results but ultimately it did yielduseful results.

The first graph shows how many leads I got per group (identified by letter, sorry competitors.)  They were roughly all in the same ball park with 'Group E' trailing by half.  I was surprised by how strongly the control group did even though it was second last - go shiny bouncy ball!!

The next chart is how much I spent per lead.  I'm also charting the 'power ranking' in this chart.  The power ranking is a calculation using the buying intent of the lead.  I used a lower number (i.e. 1) for 'Under a year' and a higher number (exponentially, i.e. 32) for Immediate.  For an answer '1-3 month'  I used 8.  the power ranking is the average lead cost divided by the average lead value for the group. 

As an example,  if the group lead average cost was $3, and the average buying intent was 8 (1-3 months) the power ranking would be 3/8 or .375.  To wit, a lower power ranking is good.

Here the differences between the groups stand out a bit more.  As you can see, Group A had both the lowest cost AND the highest buyer intent where Group D had the highest cost and the lowest buyer intent.  While I was hoping for a clear single winner here, knocking out one poor producer and validating what I was selecting was better than random was a big win.

If I had the budget, the next step would be to further split each interest group into its own ad and run it.  I could also do this experiment again by playing with demographics.  However I be a wee little company so this may be the furthest I can go (at the moment) with this type of experimentation.

By Dave Blake Owner, Spirit Pieces

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Owning a Small Business - Facebook A/B Advertising Testing

Back when life was simple, one used their hands to work and advertised with a hammer, a stout tree and a piece of paper.  But now, there are SEO specialists, who are different than SEM specialists, who are different than XYZ specialist (ok, maybe not that last one but you just wait!)   The fragmentation of advertising channels and techniques is ever growing.  There's just an overwhelming amount of learn; best to start with the major players.

Today I'm going to focus on Facebook, which much to my chagrin seems to be taking over more of my life every day.  Facebook is very much a dual edged sword.  Very high usage, inline social proofing (comments/shared) and the ability to deeply slice your demographic.  On that last one, you can slice by interest, life event, even job title, allowing you to tightly target your ads.   

The downside is you can spend a lot of money on chasing down loose ends and Facebook doesn't make it easy to do complicated A/B testing (and I've yet to find a good App for that.)  For this reason, among others, Facebook is notorious for poor returns in terms of advertising.  With that said, I'm going to share a bit of how I set up a A/B test for a complimentary business of mine utilizing the wood pendants I use for keepsakes for elegant pill cases for men (TwistedWoodPillCases.)

I'm not going to get into the step by step process for creating an ad, Facebook covers that quite well via online help in their ad creator here.  What I will talk about is the thought process for deciding who to target ads for. 

My Twisted Wood Pill Cases are these little wonders.  About 2" in length, 3/8th inch diameter and hold 4-5 pills:

I came up with this product after my own challenges keeping a small aspirin or other pill on my person.  Often I shove the pill in my little jean pocket or in my wallet.  Not very sanitary and often just forgotten about.  I saw my keepsake pendants could double for this usage. 

In any case, I could just make an ad campaign for everyone, but clearly there are better ways to handle this.  But how exactly do I start building a demographic profile?

Warning; it is very easy to spend money on Facebook Ads and get very little market traction.  Everyone advertising on Facebook needs to be aware of not falling into the 'Like Trap.'  The like trap is where you get a lot of likes on your product, but no sales.  Bad - because without sales you eventually run out of money and then there are no more likes.  I suppose it's sort of like gambling or the fame game addiction, but with emoticons...

So back to figuring out demographics.  The first way, useful if you don't know who your market is, would be simply advertise to EVERYONE and then after a week looking at your demographics tab to see who expressed the most interest in your product.  Keep in mind who expresses the most interest MAY NOT be who buys the most.  We're simply starting out here so this information is valuable.

The second way is more appropriate if you already have a brand identity and know roughly who you want to market to.  In my case, I want to build a fun off-beat fan targeted to mostly men from 35-55; those who are old enough might need to take a pill every now and then but are still young enough to care about looking stylish doing so.  As such, I set my marketing to 35-55 men nationwide.

As mentioned, my brand is off-beat humor; as such here is one of my ads

So a bit more on demographics.  I'm going to target this to those who like beer OR hiking OR hanging out AND who also are making between $50K+.   Now here comes the tricky part.  Let's say I get results; which one of those demographics are responsible?

To answer these, we do A&B testing.  Whether you decide to do this under a single campaign or multiple campaigns is up to you (I'm aware of no upside/downside either way) but you'll want to make a different Ad Group (this is due to Facebook sets demographic targeting at the Ad Group level); in my case one will target beer, one hiking, and one hanging out. I still want to AND this with $50K+ income.  Generally I set the spend to be equal between the groups.  Additionally I use the same ad copy for each ad.  Like with any A/B testing we're trying to reduce variables to ONE - in this case demographic interest.

Now remember the Like Trap?  Again, very important to make sure you're optimizing for sales verses interest.  There are a number of ways to do this in Facebook.  Assuming you have a Facebook Pixel set up you can do a custom conversion on your cart.  I would also set a custom parameter such as ad=beer so you can also utilize Google Analytics.  Once these are all set, off to the races we go.

Now you have other options, such as scheduling, optimization options and what not.  Regardless of your choices, make sure they're the same.  I also would like this run for at least a week.  If money is an issue, I would spend maybe $5 a day BUT run it for at least a week to help take some of the daily variability out of the equation (you can test temporal variables another time.)

At the end of that week (or two or four) it should be pretty clear via your conversions what is working and what isn't.  You may find some demographics are less frequent purchases but the purchases themselves are larger, and conversely.   Rinse, repeat, and you'll surely get closer to your optimal ad mix.

by David Blake Owner, Spirit Pieces www.spiritpieces.com

[spiritpieces]

Lilac Spiral Memorial Glass Egg

This lovely solid glass paperweight eggs contain a small amount of ash from your dearly departed loved one. The ash is mixed into the glass egg at time at formation and appears as a small streaks of ash in the glass.  About 2" in diameter and 3" in height.

This is the perfect addition to any window ledge, desk or mantle; alternatively get one of our light stands to make this a memorial light and/or nightlight. This lovely glass memorial, with ashes blown directly into the glass, is a great companion piece to an existing cremation urn.   Available in other colors; to view list add egg to cart.

 Upon placing an order, we'll send you a collection kit free of charge. This is then sent in with the cremains and the glass artist hand-makes your memorial glass orb.  Any remaining cremains is sent back. Delivery is 2-4 weeks after the kit is sent in.

This is a lovely way to remember the life of a loved one or loved pet.  Only 1/2 a teaspoon of cremains is used to make this memorable glass art with cremains so it's a great way for others beyond the person holding onto the cremation urn to keep their loved ones close to hear.

[spiritpieces]

Curly Stem Memorial Glass Flower with Infused Ashes from People and Pets

The lovely curly stemmed glass memorial Forever Flower has a small amount of cremains added to the glass flower.  Handmade in the USA, it measures 7" long with the flower 3" wide.   An amazing way to remember loved ones, it looks great on a mantle, placed in a flower planter, or as a home decor piece.  Ships 2-4 weeks after the free collection kit for the cremains is sent in.   A great alternative to funeral flowers; can be purchased as a sympathy gift or bearevement gift.

We've demonstrated one of the many ways you could use our Forever Flowers memorial art glass in home decor by taking a clear glass vase and filling it with floral stones.  The vase ($1.99) is about 4" high and 5" wide; we've added 4 small containers of Home Stones decorations for a layering effect; each container was $3.99.  Alternative patterns include a banded sand approach or using acrylic water.  Only the glass flower is included in this purchase.

[spiritpieces]

Curly Stem Memorial Glass Flower with Infused Ashes from People and Pets

The lovely curly stemmed glass memorial Forever Flower has a small amount of cremains added to the glass flower.  Handmade in the USA, it measures 7" long with the flower 3" wide.   An amazing way to remember loved ones, it looks great on a mantle, placed in a flower planter, or as a home decor piece.  Ships 2-4 weeks after the free collection kit for the cremains is sent in.   A great alternative to funeral flowers; can be purchased as a sympathy gift or bearevement gift.

We've demonstrated one of the many ways you could use our Forever Flowers memorial art glass in home decor by taking a clear glass vase and filling it with floral stones.  The vase ($1.99) is about 4" high and 5" wide; we've added 4 small containers of Home Stones decorations for a layering effect; each container was $3.99.  Alternative patterns include a banded sand approach or using acrylic water.  Only the glass flower is included in this purchase.

[spiritpieces]

The Forever Vacation Project

If your dearly departed loved to travel the world, The Forever Vacation Project is a wonderful way to remember them.  We offer 1" glass discs with infused ashes that can be discretely distributed when traveling.  Take a couple on your trip to Alaska and distribute them among the meadows, take a couple more on your trip to Scotland and leave them by the castles on the moors. This is meant to be a shared experience among family and friends so we offer bulk discounts on our pricing, up to 25% off for orders of 20 or more discs.  If this sounds like a wonderful way to remember your loved ones, please feel free to read more about it on our The Forever Vacation Project page.

The amount of cremation ash needed for the touchstone discs is very small, roughly one teaspoon will be enough for 5 disks.  They are available in multiple colors and styles; weights is roughly 1 ounce each.

Due to their solid glass nature and geometry these are quite hardy and can survive handling that would break more fragile glass objects like glasses and cups.  As such, they will travel well and from a legal perspective are considered glass rather than cremains. 

If you're looking to travel to a place the dearly departed loved to visit, or always talked about visiting, our memorial touchstones with cremation ash are a wonderful way to remember the loved one.

[spiritpieces]

Handmade Steampunk Airship with Handcarved Wooden Keepsake Urn for Cremation Ash

Have your loved one travel the heavens in style with this unique hand blown glass steampunk inspired airship with a hand carved Bethlaham Wood keepsake passenger urn compartment.  This airship is specially designed by Bandu at Salusda Glassworks and measures 8" in total length with 1.5" of that being the tail fin.   The wood keepsake urn has been hand carved by Clint out of Bourne, Texas and is made from olive wood imported from Bethlehem, Israel.  The end caps are gold plated and hold about a teaspoon of ash.  This super unique funerary art piece is great for loved ones and a great companion piece to existing urns.

[spiritpieces]

Clear Bubble Veiled Memorial Paperweight with Ash in Glass

This lovely solid glass paperweights contain a small amount of ash from your dearly departed loved one. The ash is mixed into the orb at time at formation and appears as a small halo of ash in the glass.  About 3" in diameter

This is the perfect addition to any window ledge, desk or mantle; alternatively get one of our light stands to make this a memorial light and/or nightlight. 

These lovely memorial glass paperweights with ash from cremation infused into the glass make for wonderful memorial keepsakes of your loved one.  We can use ash from people and pets in the process; only 1/4th a teaspoon of ash is used per paperweight.  We'll send you a collection kit for the cremation ash shortly after your order; this will contain any stands or other embellishments you order.  Once you send in your kit, we'll have the paperweights sent back to you within 2-4 weeks.

These glass memorial keepsake paperweight ornaments and eggs are great substitutes for keepsake urns or garden urns and great companion pieces to garden memorial stones.  These are suitable for outside use and can be placed on a flat rock or along the edge of an outdoor planter, especially one with flowers.  

Alternatively, these make for great indoor home decor accents.  Place on a sunny window or counter and have them sparkle in the sun.  Makes for great mantle pieces.  Get one of our lit stands and you'll have a great memorial light  or a creative memorial night light to keep the spirit of your loved ones close.

These can be purchased as sympathy gifts/bereavement gifts on in memory of the loved on.  The ashes in glass makes for a long term sentimental gift.  The memory glass can be engraved by your local awards shop.

We sell various memorial stands and displays, however with a bit of creative shopping you can find many stands and other potential display items at various local stores.

If your beloved cat, dog, or family friend has passed, these will make the grieving process easier.  For orders of 5 or more, we give a 15% discount with coupon 5Orbs15; perfect for family and/or friends of family purchases.  If you have questions, please reach out to us at [email protected]

[spiritpieces]

Rope Memorial Glass Ornament with Cremation Ash - Multiple Colors Available

Rope orbs infuse a small amount of ash with a single rope of colored glass embedded within the greater glass matrix.  You can select two primary colors once added to the cart; above blue and white have been used.     Engravable.   Order 5 or more orbs and get 15% off entire order with coupon code 5Orb15Off - not to be combined with other offers.

Each artisan glass orb is hand-made specifically for the requesting family by expert glass blowers.  An optional small amount of cremains can be added to the glass orb for no additional charge.  Great for hanging off of memorial trees, in a memorial garden, off of birdhouses, or in the house in the window as a sun-catcher.

Available in both 2" orbs (racquetball sized, ~0.75lbs) and 3" orbs (baseball size, ~1.5lbs) We'll contact you after purchase for the color choices. Colors are Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Brown, Pink and Purple, Grey, Black and White. Available in double hook or single hook configuration as well as free-standing paperweight with a flat bottom (no hooks.)  If you're considering a paperweight Spirit Piece, check out our bases and stands.

If you want to include cremains; we send a free kit after your order is placed.  We use less than 1/2 a teaspoon of cremains per orb. If you have any questions about color or the process, please contact us at [email protected]

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Hummingbird Spirit Animal with Keepsake Glass Garden Urn

This hummingbird spirit animal glass figurine hangs from the bottom of a keepsake garden urn.     Add a small amount of cremation ash (1/2 teaspoon)  via small hole in the top glass piece with a provided funnel and seal with a small cork and some epoxy glue (not provided.)  Hang from a tree, a bird house or other outdoor feature or hang in the house.The hummingbird figurine is 3" in length, the diameter of the top glass is also 4".  Available in red, blue and green.  This product is for the orange hummingbird

 This glass memorial urn makes for a unique and beautiful memorial of your loved one, be they person, cat or dog.  Buy it for someone who lost a loved on as an amazing bereavement gift, sympathy gift and remembrance gift.  You can put ashes from people, pet ashes, pet hair, feathers and notes into this keepsake.

[spiritpieces]

Hummingbird Spirit Animal with Keepsake Glass Garden Urn

This hummingbird spirit animal glass figurine hangs from the bottom of a keepsake garden urn.     Add a small amount of cremation ash (1/2 teaspoon)  via small hole in the top glass piece with a provided funnel and seal with a small cork and some epoxy glue (not provided.)  Hang from a tree, a bird house or other outdoor feature or hang in the house.The hummingbird figurine is 3" in length, the diameter of the top glass is also 4".  Available in red, blue and green.  This product is for the orange hummingbird

 This glass memorial urn makes for a unique and beautiful memorial of your loved one, be they person, cat or dog.  Buy it for someone who lost a loved on as an amazing bereavement gift, sympathy gift and remembrance gift.  You can put ashes from people, pet ashes, pet hair, feathers and notes into this keepsake.

[spiritpieces]

Glass Keepsake Urn for Gardens with Handmade Glass Bird

This amazing keepsake urn comes with a handmade glass cardinal figurine and suncatcher beads.  A small hole is in the top glass ornament.  Add a small amount of cremation ash (1/2 teaspoon) with a provided funnel and seal with a small cork.  Hang from a tree, a bird house or other outdoor feature.

This glass keepsake urn makes for a unique and beautiful memorial of your loved one, be they person, cat or dog.  Buy it for someone who lost a loved on as an amazing bereavement gift, sympathy gift and remembrance gift.

The top ornament is handblown and shaped via hot glass artisian techniques.  The handmade glass cardinal figurine is made from borosilicate glass using lampworking techniques.

Dimensions:

Top keepsake urn is 4" in diameter and about 3.5" high.  The red cardinal is 4" long and 3" wide.  Total ornament space is 7".

Ships 1-2 weeks.

[spiritpieces]

Ladybug Keepsake Urn Glass Pendant - Handmade Cremation Jewelry

This amazingly intricate keepsake urn with a red lady bug and paw prints can be worn as a keepsake pendant.  It holds a small amount of cremation ash from your loved one.  This is a wonderful sympathy and bereavement gift for anyone who recently lost a loved one.  Handmade by Mariya, a super talented Russian based lamp-worker.

Pendant ships in two parts; the urn and the stopper.  Takes about 1 ml of ash; best sealed using a silicone glue or dishwasher safe glue.  Does not include necklace.