Monument maker · Davison, Michigan
Mastermind Creation Co. is a Michigan monument maker. We draw, cut, laser etch, deliver, and set custom monuments, headstones, grave markers, and memorial benches at cemeteries statewide throughout Michigan, including Genesee, Lapeer, Sanilac, Huron, northern Oakland, and northern Macomb. Every memorial is designed one-on-one with the family, and nothing goes into production until you approve it.
Upright monuments · designed, etched, and set for one family
Every type below is drawn, cut, etched, and set by us. Finished memorials we made for Michigan families are in the gallery.
Granite set flush with the lawn, cut to your cemetery's size rules. Scenic and portrait laser etching available.
From $400A low marker with a sloped face that sits just above the ground, so the lettering reads from standing height.
From $600A steeper face on a wider base. The readability of an upright without the full height.
From $1,250Single and companion uprights, the traditional standing memorial, with room for portraits, scenes, and custom shapes.
From $1,500A granite bench the family can sit on when they visit. A 3 foot flat top is $2,750 and a 4 foot couch bench is $4,300, with the foundation included either way. A color picture on the bench adds to the price.
$2,750 – $4,300A larger memorial for a family plot, drawn to carry several names now and leave room for the ones that come later.
From $6,500Hearts, crosses, open books and bibles, angels and wings, obelisks, trees and rock-pitch, hobby silhouettes. Etching is done in-house on Jet Black granite.
Etching from $400Every price is a starting point, not a quote. What a memorial costs depends on the granite, the size your cemetery allows, and how much etching the design carries — we work all of that out with you before anything is ordered.
Laser etching is how a face, a barn, a treeline, or a whole photograph ends up on a monument. It is not paint, film, or an applied plaque. The image is burned into the surface of the granite, so what you are looking at is the stone.
Polished granite is dark because the surface is mirror-smooth. A laser removes that polish point by point, and every point it touches turns pale. Millions of those points, at different depths and densities, build the greys of a photograph the same way ink dots build a newspaper picture. That is why the etching does not sit on top of the stone and cannot peel, flake, or wash off — there is nothing on the surface to come off. It is also why the work is done on Jet Black granite: the blacker the polish, the wider the range between the darkest shadow and the brightest highlight, and the more a portrait actually looks like the person. Lighter granites do not have that range, so on those we sandblast instead, which cuts deeper and reads beautifully for lettering, borders, roses, crosses, and emblems.
Etching starts at $400 and is done here rather than sent out, which is what makes revisions practical — a proof comes back to you, you tell us the jaw is not right or the tree line should sit lower, and we change it. What drives the price is how much surface the artwork covers and how much detail it carries: a name and a set of dates is not the same job as a full-face portrait, a hunting scene, or a farm with a horizon behind it. Portraits, wildlife, landscapes, church buildings, tractors and trucks, military insignia, pets, hobby scenes, and handwriting lifted straight from a letter or a card are all things we etch.
The original beats a photo of a photo, and a phone snapshot of a framed print on the wall usually will not hold up. Email or text us the largest file you have, screen glare and all — we would rather start from the real thing and work around its flaws. Old, damaged, and faded pictures are normal here; so is pulling one person out of a group photo.
We prepare the image for stone rather than printing it as-is. Backgrounds come out, contrast is rebuilt for granite instead of paper, and scenes are drawn to the shape and size of the face they are going on so nothing important lands on a curve or an edge.
You see the etching laid out on the monument before the laser runs. Revisions happen at this step, and nothing is cut until you tell us it is right.
The approved artwork is etched on our own equipment, on the same stone we cut and the same stone we set. If you want to see the range first, the gallery is full of finished etchings we have done for Michigan families.
We work directly with families rather than through a sales floor, which keeps the money you spend on the stone itself instead of the overhead around it. You talk to the people who draw, etch, and set your memorial.
Families bring us photographs, stories, symbols, hobbies, and landscapes. We draw the memorial from those, then send proofs and make revisions until the design is right.
Custom laser etching starts at $400 and is done in-house on Jet Black granite, which is what makes detailed portraits, wildlife, and full scenes possible. Other granite colors are sandblasted. Custom shapes are cut in-house too.
We confirm each cemetery’s requirements ourselves, help coordinate the foundation, and deliver and set the finished stone ourselves. The people who drew your memorial are the people who set it.
Ordering a monument should not feel like signing for something you have not seen. The approval step comes before production, not after it.
Custom shapes are special orders, so they need the cemetery’s approval on shape and size and they take longer than a standard monument. We tell you that up front rather than after the order is placed. The four shapes we cut most often are hearts, crosses, open books and bibles, and angels and wings — but obelisks and columns, trees and rustic rock-pitch, children’s shapes, and hobby silhouettes are all cut in-house as well, and a shape outside that list is still worth asking about.
Tell us who the memorial is for and what you have in mind. We talk through monument type, cemetery, pricing, and timing before anything is ordered.
Once the order is placed we review the drawing with your family and personally confirm the cemetery’s requirements, including foundation work when it is needed.
We send proofs and make revisions. Production begins only after the family approves the final direction.
The finished monument is delivered and set at the cemetery.
Consultations are free and there is no obligation. If an existing stone needs care instead, we also clean headstones for $80 per stone through Genesee, Lapeer, Sanilac, and Huron, and reset monuments that have leaned or sunk.