We watched "P.S. I love you" the other day. The chicks husband dies from a brain tumor. He is cremated and she designed the "box" he was "stored" in. She carried him around for quite awhile. It was very "bikerish". My husband said I should do design a "vessel" for him. I said all I can do is quilt, I don't think a quilt would keep him all in the same place. 
I'm sure you know, actual cremains are nothing but ground up bones. The cremation process pretty much vaporizes all soft tissue. All crematories have a grinder by the oven in order to reduce the deceased into a nice manageable boxful of gravel.
We had my wife's brother in our closet for about a year before we decided what to do with him. My wife (and his two grown children) spread his fragments over their mother's grave at Laurelland. Of course, since my mother and her mother are buried side by side, I had to ask, "You didn't get any on my mother did you?"