Lisa Wood’s heart was pounding out of her chest the first time she was called to Auckland City Hospital for work. She isn’t a doctor or a nurse. She takes moulds of newborn babies’ hands and feet, which she then sets in stone as a special keepsake for proud parents.
Usually she makes her visit when mum and baby have settled back home, but this one was different. The little boy had been stillborn at just 19 weeks – perfectly formed but too early to live – and his parents wanted Lisa, 32, to make replicas of his feet as a precious reminder of the son they would never bring home.
“My heart was in my throat, but the baby’s dad met me in the foyer and gave me a big bear hug,” recalls the South Auckland mum-of-two. “He didn’t know me from a bar of soap, but he said, ‘Come and meet my son.’”
Knowing how treasured those tiny toes would be to that baby’s family – a concrete reminder of the wee soul they’d lost – led Lisa to offer her services to other Auckland families in similar heartbreaking situations. Soon it became second nature. “As I worked with these babies, I found myself rocking them and singing to them. I didn’t even realise I was doing it until a mother started crying and said, ‘Thank you for treating my baby like she’s normal.’”
Bigger keepsakes are made from concrete with a metallic finish.
Picture perfect
A few years ago, Lisa had a brainwave: “Wouldn’t it be cool to produce 3D figures from photographs?” After a series of failed experiments, the former teacher aide has perfected the technique and has since made around 20 bespoke jewellery pieces, and turned her passion into a new business, Face It.
“Even if a person has just one photograph of a baby they lost 30 years ago, I can work with that,” says Lisa, explaining that it takes two to three weeks to transform a photograph into a lifelike 3D mould, which is then set in the precious metal of the client’s choosing. While many of the pieces she has made have been “angel casts”, as she calls them, Lisa has also made charms with living babies, a cat and a 53-year-old man.
Presenting a client with a long-lasting image of their loved one, she says, is humbling. “One of my clients called the other day. She’d just received her charm and was so blown away, she could hardly string a sentence together. I really feel I’ve found my place in the world, helping families remember their loved ones in a unique way.”
“I’ve found my place in the world,” says Lisa, whose special mementoes include sweet silver charms and lifelike casts.
