Mom, Here's Looking at Me

Friday, March 28, 2003 Vol. CCXLI NO. 61

WE THOUGHT we had outgrown making our own gifts for Mom with that ceramic soapdish back in third grade. But with Mother's Day coming May 11 and diamonds off the list the year (sorry, Mom), we were in the market for something with a personal touch.

Even better: something with our picture on it. For $150--or much less--a number of Internet sites with names like Angelic Inspirations and Sky High Designs will make Mom a custom pendant from her favorite baby photo, by either reproducing it onto metal, like a photocopy, or mounting it behind glass. Voila: inexpensive and precious at once.

But would Mom want to wear it? To find out, we bough sterling-silver necklaces from five sites, in each case using the same color photo (of a friend's baby in the Halloween costome). Then we asked a Connecticut mother's group to weigh in. To our surprise, we found a unanimous favorite--and several our experts deemed hokey.

First, though, a word of caution to the rushed. These gifts take more effort than buying off the rack: You much choose a photo, follow explicit directions (some sites accept only mailed-in photos, no electronic ones)--and do it weeks in advance. (That's why we're telling you now.) We chose to have our photo converted to black and white. Be prepared--like much custom-design, there can be lots of back-and-forth: One place contacted us five times to make sure our photo had been cropped the way we wanted it.

Once the necklaces arrived, it was off to the South/West Stamford chapter of the Moms Club, a social and support organization for stay-at-hom mothers. We spread the jewelry on hostess Michelle Diliberto's kitchen island and asked the ladies no to hold back.

Not to worry; they didn't. "This would get ripped off my neck in seconds," Tracy Schanzer said of the Sky High Designs necklace, which had an extremely flimsy (read: not toddler-proof) chain. Nor did the group like the pendant's sharp, scalloped edge. The photo reproduction go points, surprisingly: It came out a bit blurry and faded, but the group throught this gave it a nostalgic, reel-to-reel-movie effect.

The necklace from Angelic Inspirations looked almost like the Sky High one, but its chain felt even flimsier and the photo looked "like it was scanned in by a cheap scanner," Robin DuCharme of Pastore said. True enough: plus, there was an odd, redist tinge at the top. (The company said it would have reproduced better on a silver plate than on sterling.)

But even that was better than the pendant from Golden Photo Direct, which somehow had transformed our darling photo into a silver-on-silver etching with almost no detail to speak of. "It looks like a negative," club president Isobel Bonar said. Other moms called it "freaky" and "hard to see." The chain? "Wouldn't last two minutes," Michelle said.

The fourth company, Wells Ware, reproduced the photo behind glass (in black and white) instead of fusing it to metal, and left in a lot more detail. The large-link chain seemed sturdy, too. But these moms though its look was a bit too hip-hop. Patty Zemlanikcy said if she wore it, "My husband would say, 'Go back to Long Island.'"

Until now, these six friends had stood essentially united in the opinions, and the My Life Designs necklace proved no exception--except this time, everyone approved. The photo, which looked enameled onto its charm, had excellent detail, and the toggle-clasp chain seemed fashionable, not to mention sturdy. Another plus: the nickel-size pendant, the smallest of the bunch, didn't look a grandmotherly as the giant versions.

But, in the end, that might not matter, said Cindy Ottaviano, "Someday, we'll all be wearing them."

-Lisa Gubernick and Lauren Lipton