I make breast milk jewellery

Hannah Rymkiewicz, 40, found unique ways to mark a very special bond

- JACQUI DEEVOY

Sitting at the table I’d set up in my messy upstairs box room, wearing overalls and a breathing mask, I added biodegradable glitter to some resin in a mixing bowl.

All my raw ingredients and materials were lined-up in front of me in my makeshift workshop, where I’d started making jewellery several months earlier. Citric acid, resin, precious metals, heated in a special bath, then shaped with pliers and wire cutters. Only, this time, I had an extra-special ingredient for the pendant I was designing – my friend’s breast milk.

Even though I’d always enjoyed arts and crafts, becoming a jewellery designer hadn’t been part of my life plan. I’d studied Hairdressing at college and worked in a salon for four years, then went on to have three daughters, Ellie in 1995, Jai in 2001, and Melissa in 2016.

But on 10 September 2018, my dad, Roy, died of prostate cancer, aged 68. ‘How will I manage without him?’ I thought as I struggled with my grief. We’d been very close, especially after my mum Heather, 58, had died six years earlier from bowel cancer. Dad was cremated, but when I got his ashes home, I didn’t really know what to do with them. I wanted to keep Dad close, but do something more than have his ashes in an urn.