‘I make pendants from IVF embryos’
When Louise Powell started a jewellery-making side hustle, she had no idea that her gem of a business would fill an unusual niche…
Jeweller Louise Powell shuns using conventional gemstones in her pieces, instead she embraces all types of bodily tissues – even IVF embryos and sperm – to transform them into trinkets.
And it’s proved so successful it’s allowed the mum-of-three to turn her fledgling business into a full-time occupation.
Louise, 33, says, ‘‘My bits are so personal and no one else really offers what I do. I feel so lucky that I have become so successful, it’s more like a hobby that I’m getting paid for!”
BEAUTIFUL
Louise’s foray into the world of jewellery began at the kitchen table in January 2020, when she helped her daughter, Alexa, seven. While Alexa made a bracelet, Louise created a seascape pendant. She says, ‘‘When I took it out of the mould, Alexa told me it was beautiful. I made more and posted my creations on Facebook. Friends urged me to sell them.”
Louise’s husband Ray, 43, also encouraged her, so in between working as a teaching assistant and looking after Alexa and her four-year-old twin daughters, Diann and Heather, Louise started to make sea-inspired pieces to sell on Etsy – where she received an unusual request from a new mum, asking for a breastmilk keepsake.
She recalls, ‘’I was confused at first but searched online and realised you could preserve breastmilk and then fix it with jewellery resin. After more research, I came up with a formula using preservation powder and a boiling technique for the breastmilk and eventually adding it to the resin.”
THRILLED
Her friend was thrilled with the result, so Louise put out an appeal on Facebook for more mums. Soon, tubes of breastmilk tinted in different hues of blue, green or pink arrived – the colour is affected by a mum’s diet.
When her daughter, Diann, had difficulties at school, Louise left her job to home-school her, while continuing with her business, LP Resin Heaven Arts.
Ray bought a studio for their garden in Bramley, Hants, and Louise expanded into memorial jewellery when amum who’d suffered a stillbirth and was expressing a few drops of milk asked her to make something to help her cope with her loss.
Customers have also asked Louise to make jewellery from ashes, hair, teeth and petals. She says, ‘’Some of the stories I hear are really emotional and upsetting, but I feel privileged to provide a keepsake for someone’s loss. One woman had a miscarriage and was devastated. She kept the positive pregnancy t
