With all the many forms of digital media available to the public in this day and age, you can have your photo snapped with a multitude of a devices and, unfortunately, even without your knowledge. Being immortalized can sometimes be unflattering and, even if you enjoy having your picture taken, there are different ways to live on forever.

A personalized wax sculpture is a great way to impress your loved ones - friends or family - by giving them the ultimate gift of a handcrafted, carefully sculpted wax figure of their image (bust or entire body) or that of something they hold close, like a pet or even an inanimate object.

Wax sculpting has been around for centuries, and while the process has essentially gotten easier due to various types of molds, casts and higher grade waxes, the best artists out there still do things the old fashioned way by actually taking their tools to the sculpture and refining the wax strictly by hand.

Most of us know of wax sculptures thanks to the Madame Tussauds wax museums in London and New York. Marie Tussaud, one of the world’s finest wax sculptures, set up the museum and it quickly caught the public’s attention. Her wax figures are so lifelike that people often have difficulty differentiating the sculpture from the real person.

An accurate wax sculpture of former Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong is also on display in China. This sculpture is so incredibly lifelike that a large percentage of people who see it do not believe it’s made of wax, but that it’s really Mao preserved in a glass box lying on his back.

Wax sculptures make for the ultimate gift not only because of the extremely personal and flattering aspects, but also because of the sheer amount of professionalism and the enormous amount of detail that goes into creating each wax sculpture.

Of course, the sculpture is only going to be as good as the artist chosen to sculpt the wax, but the best in the business go through a painstaking process in order to make the sculptures as lifelike as they possibly can. This includes attaching real human (or other, depending on what’s being sculpted) hair, strand by strand, until complete.

Professional sculptors also pay great attention to detail in wrinkles, pores and other fine lines. The color of the skin or other surface is also a factor that’s never overlooked by the best sculptors in the business. They match skin tone perfectly and also put as much detail in to choosing eyes and other features for the sculpture.

All of these factors combined make a wax sculpture the ultimate gift. The recipient might not immediately realize just how much work went into the figure, but a highly detailed personalized sculpture can take months of steady work to complete.

All sculptors will need an accurate and detailed photo(s) of their subject, including accurate measurements and information about the size of the figure, how it is to be placed, etc. It’s also a fairly expensive project, but that’s one of the factors that make it an ultimate gift.