Custom Glass Ornaments
Most custom photo ornaments are ceramic discs or aluminium rounds with the image printed on the surface. They look good the first year. After several cycles of being wrapped, boxed, stored in a hot loft and unwrapped, printed ink dulls and edges chip. Our ornaments are engraved inside clear glass or optical crystal by a laser that fractures the material at controlled depths, so the image is inside the object. There is nothing on the surface that can wear, and the ornament is dishwasher-indifferent, sun-indifferent and time-indifferent.
How Tree Lights Change Them
This is the practical reason customers switch to glass. An engraved ornament hung near a string light behaves like a lens: light enters the clear glass, travels through it and scatters only where the laser has worked, so the photograph lights up while the rest of the ornament stays invisible. On a lit tree an engraved glass ornament reads from across a room, which a printed disc never does.
Shapes and Sets of Custom Ornaments
Round is the traditional choice and takes a portrait or a family group. Hearts are given to partners, parents and grandparents. Squares suit photos that should not be cropped into a curve. Bells and other shapes are seasonal favourites. Sets of three or five are ordered by families who want one ornament per child or per year, and by people building a tree of remembrance ornaments over time; ordering a set keeps the engraving style consistent across all of them.
Photo Christmas Ornaments with Names and Years
Close portraits engrave best at ornament scale, since a face photographed from a distance loses definition when reduced. One or two people, a baby, a pet: all straightforward. The clear glass beside the image takes a name, a year, a couple's initials, “Baby’s First Christmas”, or two dates for a memorial. Our designers crop, brighten and remove backgrounds, lay out the text and email a free proof before engraving, and will tell you if a photograph is too small or too dark to hold up.
Ordering, Storage and Care
Upload your photo at checkout with any wording you want engraved. A designer emails a free digital proof, usually within a day, with revisions until you approve. Ornaments ship in gift boxes within 3-5 business days in the US, which is why customers order these into mid-December. Store them in the box they arrive in; glass survives loft heat and cold without any effect on the engraving, and a wipe with the included cloth is all the annual maintenance required.
