Pāpāmoa business The Spilt Milk Co. recognised for keepsake jewellery in Pet Innovation Awards

The Spilt Milk Co. founder and Pāpāmoa mother Ashley De Grey.

Pāpāmoa mother Ashley De Grey helps people keep their lost loved ones and pets “close” by crafting keepsake jewellery. Now, her business The Spilt Milk Co. has been named the 2025 memories and keepsake product of the year by the international Pet Innovation Awards.

Ashley De Grey’s keepsake jewellery business was “meant to be”.

The Pāpāmoa mother studied art and design, worked at a jewellery store, and was running her own business teaching fitness classes for mothers and babies.

By the time she was pregnant with her third child in 2018, De Grey wanted to work from home.

She found out about breast milk jewellery the week she stopped teaching and asked the mothers at her classes what they thought of it.

“They were some of my first customers.”

The Spilt Milk Co. was born.

“It was like all these little puzzle pieces came together perfectly.”

De Grey said as a breastfeeding mother, she thought breast milk jewellery was “a really cool idea”.

She researched it and found she could do it from home while being around her children.

“It’s kind of blossomed from there.”

De Grey said she started with an Instagram account and got “a few little orders” from that.

A 'pet fur cremation ash bead' made by the Spilt Milk Co. founder and Pāpāmoa mother Ashley De Grey. Photo / Supplied

It started feeling “real” a year or two later when she started getting orders on Instagram from people she did not know or had mutual friends with.

After having her third baby in 2019, she remembered lying on the couch breastfeeding while researching how to build a website.

She built a website and it “took off”.

De Grey said she had never done paid advertisements “and it’s just grown really nice by word-of-mouth”.

“Now it’s my fulltime job and I’ve got three kids at school.”

A 'pet fur paw bead' made by the Spilt Milk Co. founder and Pāpāmoa mother Ashley De Grey. Photo / Supplied

Her keepsake jewellery incorporates “DNA elements” such as breast milk, hair, embryos from an unused IVF round, or ashes.

De Grey said she worked with jewellers who created the pieces while she did the resin component and combined it all.

She worked with her customers to design it.

“For my pet ones, I do have a lot of customers that want to match the pet’s fur colour or eye colour, and I work between photos of replicating that for them.”

De Grey said a breast milk keepsake could give mothers “comfort” after they finished breastfeeding, whether it was something they were grieving when it ended or something to be proud of.

“It’s a very tangible token of something that mattered.”

The grief element was the same for pet and cremation keepsakes, offering a “tangible connection” to remind someone was “still there with them”.

De Grey’s business was named the 2025 memories and keepsake product of the year by the international Pet Innovation Awards a couple of weeks ago.

“It’s just so cool for our work to be noticed and to be out there.

“I think for a long time it’s more been just towards keeping people and loved ones close, and it’s nice that those pets can be celebrated too. Because they are people’s fur babies and they are a huge part of their life and it’s really sad when they go.

“I just feel really proud to have won.”

Megan Wilson is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.