Things to remember about scattering ashes

• There will be bones and larger pieces that most people don't expect. It doesn't look like fireplace ash which is what most people assume it looks like.
• Decide whether you want to scatter all the ashes in one place or do you want your loved one to travel all over the world? Decide how many people or locations you want and divide accordingly. I usually suggest more than one location because you might move house or out of the country. You never know where life will bring you!
• Ziplock bags will be your best friend - especially if you want to scatter ashes in a few locations or give to friends and family.
• Figure out the wind direction!! NO one wants to inhale their loved one or have them stuck in their lipgloss or blinding them!
• Check out the site before you do 'your thing' because it might not be as you remember or visualize it.
• Using flower heads when throwing ashes into the wind or over water helps you to continue to see the ashes even when they go far away because ash can become difficult to see - it IS after all ash! It also makes it that bit more natural and beautiful.
• Be careful when traveling with ashes, get permission from the airline if going as carry on and if not carry on then you run the risk of the airline losing your luggage which is not good.
• Take photos of the area, the day, whatever you do. Keep a memory of it.

http://www.celtic-ashes.com/pages/things-to-remember-about-scattering-ashes

Mourning/Cremation Jewelry - the origins

Mourning Jewelry as it was once called (in some parts of the world, still is) is a general term for jewelry that people have used over centuries as a way of honoring and remembering deceased loved ones. It has been around since the 1600’s and the earliest known pieces were hand rings. Pearls were particularly favored as they were thought to represent tears and sadness.

Cremation jewelry began to gain momentum during the Victorian Age - named after Queen Victoria who reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901. Victoria’s husband Prince Albert died of typhoid in 1861. The Queen went into full mourning for 3 years along with her court and remained in mourning for the rest of her life. The Victorians were extremely superstitious, especially where death was concerned and hung black drapes over all the mirrors in the house when in mourning. It was said that if you looked into a mirror when a body was in the house, you would be the next person to die.

The first style of cremation jewelry involved intricately woven hair. Today, most people use a piece of hair or some cremains or ashes as they are more commonly known. Historically hair ‘art’ often served as a love token or keepsake to show affection or commemorate loss or during times of physical separations like war. When people died, hair was often clipped from the head of a deceased person and then woven into a bonnet that would be given to the next of kin.

Nowadays hair is still used in keepsakes and remembrance jewelry but it is more common to use ashes or cremains. The type of jewelry we (www.celtic-ashes.com) offer is bespoke and entirely unique to the wearer and the deceased because it fuses the ash (which for every single person is different) with glass and this fusion creates not a mold but a unique shape, texture and color.

Cremation - the facts - do u want to know tho??

CREMATION  is the irreversible process of reducing human remains to bone fragments through extreme heat and evaporation.

“Cremains” is the technical term for “ashes.”  Cremains are generally gray in color and have a consistency similar to playground sand or fine gravel. The term "ashes" is misleading.

What you get back is not a soft powder, but a grey, coarse material, akin to fine gravel, made from the ground-up remains of bones.

The body is prepared by removing pacemakers, which can explode in the heat, prostheses and silicone implants and sometimes, but not always, jewelry.

The incinerator is preheated to about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (593 degrees Celsius) and up to 2,000 degrees F before the body enters.

An average human body takes from two to three hours to burn completely and will produce an average of 4 to 9 pounds of ash, enough to fill a 12″X 4″ container.

The amount of ash depends usually on the bone structure of the person and not their weight.

After the incineration is completed, the dry bone fragments are pulverised by a machine called a Cremulator.

While there may be some inevitable residue mixing, the bodies are burned one at a time to ensure the separation of the cremated remains.

To remove the human remains from the cremation chamber, a hoe-like instrument is used. Every effort is made to completely remove every piece from the chamber floor. However, tiny particles may remain in the cremation chamber and become commingled with particles from another cremation.

Most funeral homes return cremated remains in a small cardboard box fitted with a plastic-bag liner. You do NOT need to purchase an urn because ANY container, including the simple cardboard box, is sufficient for storage purposes.