Life Gems: Cool Or Not, I’ll Leave It Up To You

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I have yet to decide whether Life Gems are cool or just plain creepy. One look at their website and the spectacular jewelry takes your breath away. Beautiful lab created diamonds, in all colors of the rainbow, cut in all kinds of intricate shapes and mounted on rings, necklaces and bracelets.

Now make note of that phrase, lab created. It is perfectly possible to replicate real diamonds in a laboratory; GE perfected the practice way back in the 1950’s. Life Gems use a special extra ingredient though, the carbon remains of a deceased loved one.

Now on one hand, this is very nice. A lasting memorial of your eternal bond (or that’s what the Life Gems website says anyway) and for those who want a memento of a lost loved one it may indeed be a great comfort. Life Gems will even work with the cremains of a cherished pet. On the other hand though, isn’t this just a little too much? Turning one’s deceased significant other into a big flashy diamond ring? Sounds a little like something Tony Soprano might have come up with.

For those who are curious, the whole creation process is detailed in a very careful manner on the Life Gems website. Apparently you only need to provide them with a mere 8oz of your loved ones cremains and from that they can extract enough carbon to create a real sparkler to your exact specifications.

Life Gems don’t come cheap either. The least expensive item on the site, a .20 of carat blue diamond starts off at just under $4,000. If you want a half carat expect to fork over $10,000 setting not included. There was a rather neat “pre planning” option on the site which said that you get estimate how much it would cost to turn your love into a diamond online. The feature was broken however, and you were instructed to call for an estimate. I didn’t do that however, as my own spouse was sitting in the room and considering I have been known to complain about the relatively small size of my diamond engagement ring he may have gotten the wrong idea….