Winnipeg tattoo artist incorporates cremated ashes into custom body art
Kerri Parnell, the founder of Cremation Tattoos in Winnipeg's Osborne Village, was researching the history of tattooing and learned that early tattoos were done using wood ash. During that research, her grandmother passed away, and it gave her the idea to mix cremated ashes into the ink.
"The first cremation tattoo I did was on myself with my grandmother's ashes," said Parnell.
"It was great 'cause my family allowed me to use her ashes to learn and to bring to places and to experiment."
Parnell said there are other companies outside Canada that make cremation ink, but you have to send the ashes through the mail, and wait weeks for the ink to get back. Parnell said the thought of sending ashes through the mail felt impersonal, so she set out to make her own cremation ink.
She spoke with scientists, visited crematoriums and funeral homes, and figured out a process to mix the ashes herself. She said the tattoos have been therapeutic for her clients.
"One of the women who lost her husband, she said she physically carried around his ashes, like, to coffee, to the beach," said Parnell about a previous customer.
"She [tattooed his] motorcycle…and she said 'I'm so grateful I don't have to physically carry him around anymore'."
Sherilyn Lenton she got an Egyptian scarab beetle tattoo on her forearm to memorialize her mother. Coincidentally, she got inked at Cremation on the seven-year anniversary of her mother's death.
Lenton said she's gotten regular tattoos to honour her mom before, but the cremation tattoo feels different.
"A part of her is now a part of me, and that's permanent, and it makes me feel like she's always there," said Lenton.
Lenton said losing a parent is a difficult time in life, and the cremation tattoo has been therapeutic for her.
"Getting her ashes mixed in with the ink, it makes me feel as close to her as I have been since she passed."
Memorial tattoos can help grieving process
Parnell's cremation tattoos have caught the attention of the palliative care sector in Manitoba. Dr. Bruce Martin is a palliative care provider who wants to offer cremation tattoos to some of his patients who are dealing with loss.
"My clinical practice is influenced by patients I've cared for, but also medical literature," explained Martin.
"There are now references in what we call peer-reviewed medical literature about the importance of memorialization through tattoos."
Martin said adding ashes to regular tattoos can make them even more meaningful for patients.
"A call I had just a couple of days ago was met with a very emotional, tearful response saying 'had I only known'," said Martin about one of his patients.
"This whole concept of a lifelong link to their loved one is an important consideration."
Parnell is going to a Palliative Care Conference in Manitoba this September, where she'll have a booth set up so she can share information with the sector about the benefits of getting a cremation tattoo.
Cremation tattooing "combines my three favourite things that I love, which is art, spirit and people. So it's just like the perfect recipe for exactly what I want to do."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Podcast: AAIC 2025 highlights and the latest trends in Alzheimer's disease IVDs
This year's Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC), which took place in Toronto, Canada, on 27-31 July, featured a range of data readouts from companies developing in vitro diagnostics (IVD) for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. A key theme among many presentations was the use of ALZpath's pTau217 antibody. The biomarker featured in seven presentations and 30 posters. A presentation from Roche shared new real-world data confirming that its blood-based biomarker, Elecsys pTau217, provided comparable results to PET scan and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) diagnostics for rule-in and rule-out diagnosis of amyloid pathology. Medical Device Network sat down with Selena Yu, senior medical analyst at GlobalData, to learn more about the key IVD news from this year's AAIC and the direction in which Alzheimer's disease research and development is currently headed. You can listen to the podcast below: Este contenido insertado no está disponible en tu región. "Podcast: AAIC 2025 highlights and the latest trends in Alzheimer's disease IVDs" was originally created and published by Medical Device Network, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error al recuperar los datos Inicia sesión para acceder a tu cartera de valores Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos
Fast Company
3 hours ago
- Fast Company
Why Ikea is recalling more than 54,000 garlic presses
It's common knowledge that garlic makes everything better—but if you're cooking with a garlic press you bought from Ikea, it's time to check the model and potentially look into a refund. The company just issued a voluntary recall on thousands of garlic presses due to a 'laceration or ingestion' hazard. The recall, published on July 31 by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) includes about 43,830 Ikea garlic presses sold in the U.S. and another 10,700 sold in Canada. Here's what to know about the affected products: Which garlic press is being recalled? The product in question is the Ikea 365+ VÄRDEFULL garlic press, used to crush garlic cloves. The garlic press has a black rubber handle and zinc-coated garlic chamber, and affected models were sold for $8 at Ikea stores nationwide and online at from March 2024 through May 2025. According to the CPSC, only models with the Ikea logo—which can be found at the upper part of the handle—are subject to the recall. What's happened? Per an Ikea press release, the garlic presses are being recalled 'Due to a production error, identified after an internal investigation, indicating a risk of small metal pieces detaching during use and subsequently being ingested with food.' Have any incidents been reported so far? Unfortunately, yes. The CPSC report notes that Ikea has received a total of 10 incident reports globally, 'including three reports of lacerations and finger splinters.' No incidents or injuries have been reported in the U.S. thus far. What should I do if I own a recalled garlic press? If you own the Ikea 365+ VÄRDEFULL, stop using it immediately. The product can be returned to any Ikea location for a full refund, even without proof of purchase. 'Additionally, IKEA encourages customers to spread the word about this recall, especially if they know that the recalled product was offered, lent or sold to someone else,' Ikea's report reads. For more information, customers are directed to visit or call the company at 1-800-661-9807.
Medscape
4 hours ago
- Medscape
Lessons for Parkinson's From MS, and Vice Versa
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Indu Subramanian, MD: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Medscape. I'm so excited to have my friend and colleague, Prof Lorraine Kalia, join us today to talk about a very cool topic: what we can learn from multiple sclerosis (MS) studies and therapies, and how we can maybe translate that to some of the problems that we've been having in the Parkinson's world. Prof Lorraine Kalia is a clinical scientist at the Krembil Institute. She's also an amazing neurologist at the University of Toronto, which is my alma mater. Welcome, Lorraine. Lorraine V. Kalia, MD, PhD: Hi, Indu. Thanks for having me. Meeting of MS and PD Minds Subramanian: My name is Dr Indu Subramanian. I'm based at UCLA. Maybe we can get right into this. You had this very cool meeting in November 2022, and you had experts in the MS world as well as the Parkinson's disease world. Tell us a little bit about what inspired that meeting in the first place. Kalia: It's a bit of a personal story, actually. I might date myself a little bit, but I was a medical student during the time of the natalizumab development. At that time, I thought I was going to be an MS neurologist. Even back then, they already had a couple of disease-modifying therapies for MS and I thought, You know what, I think MS is good. I think they're in good shape. As a scientist with an understanding of the biology behind disease, it was clear to me that there still was a large amount of work needing to be done in Parkinson's disease because that's obviously how we translate things into having disease-modifying therapies. That was part of the reason — not the only reason — why I shifted into the movement disorder space. Fast-forward many years later: I often give talks around the lack of disease-modifying therapies for Parkinson's disease by introducing MS. Sometimes when you ask why we don't have a disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson's, people throw up their hands and say, "Well, you know, neurologic diseases are complicated." I'll often use the MS example to demonstrate that actually there is much that can be done in the neurologic space and there's been a lot of successes in MS. I was once giving this talk, and as a consequence of this talk, had a conversation with Parkinson Canada who thought, wow, that's an interesting idea around MS being so successful and PD lagging behind. We came up with the idea of having a meeting in Toronto. We obviously have very strong Parkinson's researchers in Toronto, but also a very strong MS team at the Saint Michael's Hospital. I collaborated with a colleague — actually, we were residents together — to bring world experts to Toronto to sit around a table, which is what we did, and talk about where we are in MS and where we are in Parkinson's disease. We were looking for common ground but also looking to see what is different and how we might think about things differently that might have led to the different paths that we've experienced in our fields. Lessons From MS Subramanian: What do you think some take-home messages for the clinician would be from that discussion? I think it was a very cool paper. Kalia: Maybe the take-home messages is it's complicated, which is not as simple as I had hoped. I hoped that we'd come back with clear messages of what we really need to do with Parkinson's. I think we found common ground for one thing. I think it's fair to say that MS has done remarkably well at treating inflammation. All of their drugs are based on that, and they will recognize that they have challenges in terms of treating the neurodegenerative part of their condition. Now that we increasingly recognize that inflammation is a part of Parkinson's disease and there's increased work around the immune basis to the disease, I think we are going to be able to take advantage of what MS has done and learn to hopefully make advances that way. For anybody who's learned about MS , its successes have hanged heavily on its neuroimaging biomarkers of MRI. Of course, biomarkers are needed for the development of Parkinson's disease , and perhaps more work into the neuroimaging piece as well as the biospecimen biomarkers is key to starting to be able to have different kinds of outcome measures. Not the clinical outcome measures that we're using right now in basically all of our clinical trials, but to have early biomarker outcome measures that will help to inform us for our later clinical trials. The other commonality between the two is this concept of earlier disease. We have our prodromal Parkinson's disease and MS has their radiologically isolated syndrome. Up until now, logically, it has made sense to us that we should treat earlier in Parkinson's disease, and that will likely give us better successes. In the MS space, there's actually proof of that. They have clinical trials showing the benefit of treating people in the radiologically isolated syndrome state. While in Parkinson's disease, it has been theoretical and seems to make sense to all of us, we don't have any hard proof to say that treating earlier is better, whereas in MS they have already demonstrated that. I think this then provides us with actual proof in the pudding that that approach really does have implications for disease progression. PD Ahead of MS for Lifestyle Subramanian: Absolutely. I think both diseases in many ways have revolutionized since back in the day when we were in training. The MS models have really come a long way, with many patients doing very well for a long time. I think we have to really take a look at where our feelings are and how we can do better. I'm excited just about the concept of identifying people early and then getting people who may be even at risk for developing Parkinson's into lifestyle measures and wellness choices. I think MS has done a great job of that as well. Can you speak a little bit about that from your own perspective? Kalia: I don't think it came out in the paper, but it came out in our discussions that as a field and as a patient population, there's probably been more embrace of lifestyle measures and physical activity in Parkinson's, which I think is kudos to us in Parkinson's disease. Maybe it's in part because in MS they have these drugs that came through one after another after another, and there's this heavy pharma management of MS that they haven't had to explore the lifestyle assets. There's a large amount that MS has to learn from Parkinson's disease, in terms of putting in place so many of the things that we discuss in Parkinson's, whether it be diet, sleep, stress or mindfulness — all of these things. I think that in Parkinson's, we're further ahead. Subramanian: Absolutely. I agree with you. I'm excited to learn from these other disease states that we train under in residency. We see these patients and we can open our minds to looking at different lenses, for sure. Thank you so much for spending the time and chatting about this. Kudos to you for having that meeting. It sounds like a great opportunity to bring great minds together. Kalia: Yes. Hopefully, we can do more of this in the future. Subramanian: Go Canada. Thank you for joining us, everyone.
