Spotlight: Lila Ruby King

Today our Spotlight travels take us to Greece to meet the amazingly talented Anna of Lila Ruby King. Not only does she create some of the most beautiful and unique jewelry on Etsy but she does it in the most sustainable way possible. From recycling her own silver and using found objects to purchasing carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas, you can look stylish AND feel good about it when you shop with Anna.

Read on to learn about how she got started, her worldly travels and what superpowers she would love to have. You can also enter to win some earrings from her shop!

Where did you grow up and where do you currently live?
I am from Perth, Australia, but for the last four years I have been living in Athens, Greece.

How long have you been selling on Etsy?
I opened my first Etsy shop on September 24, 2007 and started filling it the next day.

Do you sell on Etsy full time or do you have a day job?
Being a designer is what I do full time. Etsy makes up a big part of that, but I also have a few wholesale accounts on a couple of continents, I go to the occasional craft market here in Athens, and I do freelance graphic design work from time to time as well. It all keeps me quite busy.

What, if any, formal training have you had in your craft?
I have a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts, my major was print media and my minor was in painting. After I finished my degree I went on to study jewellery design and manufacture for a further year.

What made you decide to open up shop on Etsy?
I had just moved to Greece and was finding it hard to get my business up and running again in this new place. I found Etsy while browsing online and decided I would start up a shop, in the hope of making a little bit of money here and there while I worked out what I was going to do with everything else!

Where did your shop name come from?
Lila Ruby King is my mother’s father’s mother. My great grandmother.

What do you like least about your craft?
Not that I was ever a girly girl, I have never had a manicure in my life, but some days I do wish for nice smooth fingernails, instead of the jagged claws I usually have after a day in the studio.

Tell us about your other shop, AnnaRubyKing
My other shop (which opened first) is where I sell my cards and drawings and acrylic accessories. I do primarily consider myself a jewellery designer so that makes me put my jewellery shop first, but it took me a lot longer to set up my jewellery studio once I moved here to Athens, so that’s why that shop came later.

Do you have any advice for other sellers on Etsy or those thinking about pursuing their craft?
The good thing about Etsy is that you can start small, you can start selling online without any great expense, and from the outset you can get feedback from customers directly about your products. You can start to build up slowly and get the feel of running an arts/craft business. You can learn if this is something that you want to be doing full time, and if it is something that will support you if you do decide to do it full time.

Are there any challenges being an International seller on an American based site?
There are challenges, but being able to sell my work on Etsy is a great opportunity. I get to present my work to an international audience which I would not have been able to do so easily any other way. The main thing I consider a challenge is postage times and costs for my items heading overseas.

Five Etsy Shops you love
I have 50+ pages of favorited shops on Etsy, so these are just a taste:
ForetLA
davidshockdesigns
DanielleStewart
Artmind
prettylittlethieves

Favorite item you have purchased from Etsy
I have a blouse from ForetLA, I love it so much!

Five things you love
I love receiving packages covered in stamps, I love when the spring flowers come out, and collecting pebbles at the beach. I love prewashed spinach and fresh raspberries.

Five things you don’t
Picking out the gunky stuff that gets stuck in sink. Tiny sidewalks. Loud talkers. Loud talkers on their mobile phones sitting next to you on the bus. And only those living in Greece will get this one, but I can’t stand Mr Paliagis.

Where is the coolest place you have ever been?
It’s fresh in my memory at the moment so it’s standing out, but recently I was standing in front of David in Florence and that was very cool. Another amazing place I’ve visited is Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic.

What is your favorite leisure time activity?
I haven’t got to do it in over 5 years, but I love horse riding and being around horses in general. These days my substitutes are shopping, reading, hiking and the occasional pebble collecting mission.

If you could be a superhero, what would your powers be?
This is a difficult and vitally important question. I think if I had to choose I would want to be Indestructible. Yes I could do great deeds and fight crime, but my primary motivation is that I would never have to go visit a doctor or a hospital or a physio ever again. I am the sort of person that gets tonsillitis on the first day of a long weekend, or sprains my wrist and freaks out about carpal tunnel syndrome, or accidentally brands myself with my torch after soldering. It would be nice to never have to worry about this sort of thing ever again and the money I saved would indeed be significant.

What would you like to learn?
I always have a long list of new things I want to learn! Some of the things on my list are enamelling, book binding, ehm, speaking better Greek…

What does the future hold for you and your shop?
Who knows what the future holds for me, as for my shop, I’m working on some new designs that should start appearing in the next few weeks. I plan on playing with wood more, and using it in different ways, and experimenting with gold some more.
I know my shop is desperately lacking rings and bracelets, I don’t wear a lot of either, so I find it hard to make decisions on what works, but hopefully some new designs in this area will be coming soon too!

You can keep up with Anna and new happenings in both her shops by signing up for her newsletter, visiting her blog or following her on Twitter.

GIVEAWAY TIME!

Anna is offering one lucky winner a pair of sterling silver sleeper hoops and your choice of 3 sets of glass drops from the options shown above!

HERE'S HOW TO ENTER:
Please leave a comment on this post with your favorite item from Lila Ruby King AND ALSO what piece of jewelry that you own is your favorite and why.

You can enter once per day and YOU MUST INCLUDE your first name -AND- etsy username or email address with every entry. (If you are worried about email spam, you can spell out the 'at' and 'dot' rather than using the standard email format.)

Receive additional entries (one each) if you:

Follow or subscribe to this Blog, my Facebook or my Twitter

Follow or subscribe to Anna's blog or twitter

(No need to leave separate comments)

You have until Sunday, April 18 at 10 pm (est) to enter and I will announce the winner Monday morning. Good luck!