This week we’re joined by Laura, owner of With Love and Dreams and a self-taught preservation artist. Laura turns wedding and funeral flowers, ashes, hair, clothing and breast milk into resin keepsakes and jewellery, and has become one of the people grieving families in Ireland trust with their most precious things.

She tells us how a lockdown resin kit became an award-winning business. She also shares the story of how she practised with ashes before her first real piece, and it involves the family dog, a heatwave and a lot of ashtrays. Laura talks about leaving a job where she was bullied, what it’s like to hold space for people on the worst days of their lives, the year she lost five family members in under six months, and why she won’t hand the personal side of her work to anyone else.

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro: meet Laura from With Love and Dreams
01:10 What a preservation artist does
02:00 From lockdown hobby to self-taught resin artist
03:28 Her first ever ashes piece
04:35 Tyson the boxer and the great ashtray hunt
08:26 Working with grief and keeping it together for clients
11:36 Loving the work, and leaving a job over bullying
15:30 Starting out alone and finding her networking group
21:00 Creative childhood, Billie Barry and the Bugsy Malone audition
23:48 What is resin, and why it takes so long
25:42 How you choose your keepsake piece
27:18 Why flower preservation can take up to nine months
28:13 Why she’s staying a one-woman business
32:12 From the front room to her own studio
35:04 Preserving clothes, fabrics and baby shoes
36:12 Pricing and keeping it affordable
37:16 A new jewellery collaboration coming soon
38:09 The weirdest things she’s been asked to preserve
40:23 Award wins and nominations
43:45 Her hardest time in business
48:28 Her highest high: the new studio, windows and all
50:50 Did she ever see herself as an entrepreneur?
54:19 Advice for young women thinking of taking the leap
56:43 Running a business means you never switch off
58:09 Well-known clients and the order that never arrived
59:50 Alan’s dog walking and pet taxi business
01:01:50 Wrap-up