How Your Piece Is Made

Nothing is ever pressed against skin. No ink, no plaster tray, no waking a sleeping baby for a kit. You photograph the hand, the foot or a raised paw with the phone already in your hand, and the capture tool looks at the shot on the spot and offers a retake until it holds.

The judgement is ours, not yours. Within twenty-four hours we tell you plainly whether the shot will carry a print, and if it will not, nothing has started and your money has not moved.

• The original photograph is deleted the moment the capture is finished.
• What stays is the print alone: no face, no room, no date attached to it.
• You can delete that print yourself at any time from your account.

A sculptor works your print out of the photograph, ridge by ridge, until there is a model of it. The pads of a newborn heel and the whorl in a dog's paw are read by an eye and then cut by hand; a template cannot tell a crease from a shadow.

This is the slow part of the making, and it is the part that decides whether the finished piece looks like your baby or like a stock shape with a name on it.

The base for your piece is formed first. The print is then formed at finer detail than the base and joined to it by hand, so the raised work sits true and the edges run clean under a thumb.

A counterweight goes inside so the piece sits heavy in the palm where it should. A small chip is set into the back so a phone can open whatever you attach to it later.

Nothing here is hardened with heat. That is deliberate: heat pulls a piece inward while it sets, so a print that goes in at one size comes out at another. Because we do not use it, the print stays the size you approved.

Primer first, then the color, then the lettering laid on as a decal by hand, then the clear coats over all of it. Nothing moves on until the coat underneath is dry, and that drying is most of the wait between your order and your box.

The surface that comes out the other side is satin, cool to the touch, and it is finished at the edges by hand rather than left as it came off the form.

• We guarantee this color against fading for fifty years. The terms are in the last tab on this page.
• Rush moves your order to the front of the bench queue. It does not skip a drying.

Before your piece is boxed we photograph the actual object and send it to you: the name, the date, the prints, the color as it came out. We write twice and your approval is what lets it go. If two days pass with no reply, we proceed with the version you were shown, so your place in the queue is not lost.

It is then set into a cushion printed for that piece alone, wrapped and closed with wax at the bench, and carried out in a heavy double-wall carton with foam boards against every face.

• Your arrival date is quoted at checkout, before you pay.
• The stages it passes through are visible on your order page as they happen.
• If it arrives damaged, write to us within seven days and we remake and reship it at our cost.

Hold a phone to the piece and the photographs, words and dates you attached to it open on your screen. That is the whole of what we promise about it: the object on the shelf is the anchor, and the layer behind it is where the rest of the day lives.

Three things about that layer are promises rather than features. You can download everything yourself at any time, in full. Who reaches it is by invitation, and you control the list. And if we ever close this site, you still get a complete export before the lights go out.

• The first year is included with your piece. What it costs afterwards is disclosed at checkout, never added quietly.
• If a subscription lapses, nothing you have already put in is deleted.
• Sound is a bonus inside the archive, not a promise on the front of the box.

The guarantee: we guarantee the color of your piece against fading for fifty years from the day it ships. It covers color. It does not cover a drop onto stone, and we would be lying if we said the piece could not chip. To claim it, write to us with your order number and a photograph, and we refinish the piece or replace it at our cost.

Where it is made: the carving, the joining, the color and the boxing are done by our own hands at our workshop in Liling, Hunan, China, and shipped to your door. The person who cuts the model and the person who seals the box work at the same bench.

What we do not claim: no certifications, no laboratory reports, no safety seals, no percentages, no precision figures. We do not name a material at you either — it is cool and satin-smooth, it is heavier than it looks, and that is the entire claim. It is a display piece meant to be held and looked at, not a toy, and not something to eat or drink off.