Our Story
3D Heirloom began with my grandparents’ wedding photograph. The paper had yellowed, and the picture had grown dark. The grandparents I knew had white hair. In the photograph, they were young and newly married. My father hadn’t been born yet. Long before they were his parents or my grandparents, they were two people who had fallen in love.
That photograph stayed with them as they grew old together. Time changed their faces, but they still loved each other as much as ever. Through that one picture, I got to know them a little as they were before my time.
Today we can carry thousands of photos on a phone. I kept thinking about what it meant for that one photograph to have stayed in our family. That’s why we started 3D Heirloom. We use the technology we have today to turn a photo or a drawing into something a family can hold on to as the years go by. Someday, we hope someone will pick it up, sit beside a child, and say, “Those are my grandparents. Here are my mom and dad. That’s my big sister. And that’s my best friend.”
Why We Make Personalized Gifts
Anyone else looking at that family portrait sees a family posing for a picture. You remember the joke your dad told a second before the shutter clicked, and how your mom doubled over laughing.
When you give them that photograph, you’re saying, “I still remember how happy we were that day.”
That’s what we want to keep for you, the meaning in a photograph that only your family knows. It’s what the name Heirloom means to us. Years from now, someone can pick up that gift and tell the next generation what happened that day.
The Craft
Every piece starts with the photograph or drawing you choose.
To capture a familiar expression, we engrave light and shadow deep inside crystal. To recreate the way two people lean into each other, we shape each curve in three dimensions. Even the tissue box on Grandma’s table began with a child’s drawing of a wobbly little monster, crooked mouth and all. We kept that lopsided grin just as it was. Grandma would know that smile anywhere. She knows whose little hand drew it.
When the craft is at its best, you almost forget it’s there. All you see is love.
Our Mission
At 3D Heirloom, we make personalized gifts. We believe the most precious gift is the one only you could give, whatever its price.
Our mission is to help you turn the brightest moments you’ve shared with family, a partner, or a dear friend into a keepsake you can hold in your hands and one day pass down.
If a photo came to mind, we’d love to hear its story and turn it into a gift for the person you’re thinking of.