Small Goodbyes is for the grief of losing a pet: the empty spot on the sofa, the lead still by the door. We make one thing: a memorial portrait of the animal you loved, in a painted style, from your own photo.
Who runs it
Small Goodbyes is written and run by Craig Fearn. He writes the guides on this site and checks each fact against the page it came from: the burial rules against the environment agencies' own guidance, and the cremation and vet prices against each practice's published list, with the date it was read.
How a portrait is made
You upload a favourite photo and choose a style: a warm oil portrait, a soft watercolour, charcoal, a minimal line drawing or pastel. The portrait is made from your photo by image-generation software, in that style, so it is an interpretation of your photo rather than a painting done by hand. You see a free, watermarked preview, and nothing is printed until you approve it.
It is then printed to order by an independent print partner and posted to a UK address with delivery included. If you would like the photo kept just as it is, we will print your photo exactly as it is, checked against every size we sell.
How each order is checked
The picture you approve on screen is the one that gets printed. We keep a clean copy of that exact preview and print from it, so there is no second attempt that comes out looking different. Before any file goes to the printer, it is checked to make sure it is there, that it opens and that it is big enough for the size you ordered.
The first time anyone orders a new size or format, that order is held back as a draft and looked at before it is released to print. It slows that one order down a little, and it means a problem with a new size is caught on our side, not found by you when the parcel arrives.
Why the guides come first
Most of this site isn't about the portrait. It's about the days after a pet dies: what to say to a child, what a cremation costs, what the rules are for burying a dog in the garden. Those pages are written for whoever needs them, whether or not they ever order anything, and they stay that way. Where a guide quotes a price or a rule, it names where it came from and when it was read, because those things change and you should be able to check them.
What we won't do
The pages about grief itself carry no buy buttons, and we won't print a portrait you haven't approved. Your photo is used to make your order and nothing else.
How to reach us
Email hello@smallgoodbyes.com, or write to Small Goodbyes, 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX. There is no phone line. You will find everything else on the contact page, and you can look up an order with the reference in your confirmation email.