Featured Maker // Custom Made
Anna Butler
Jewellery Designer & Founder of Custom Made
Anna Butler, fabulous founder of Custom Made, designs and makes jewellery from her studio in Oxford. Her jewellery has a simple and minimal aesthetic with a strong emphasis on shape and colour. Anna uses a mixture of precious metals, base metals, acrylic and acetate. It is the use of these acrylics and acetates that really bring colour to her beautiful collection. Anna is passionate about putting colours together and this is evident from her gorgeous colour palette which runs throughout her work.
After finishing her Fashion Design degree, Anna worked for 5 years as a menswear designer. Anna decided she wanted to do something completely different but didn’t quite know what. She subsequently left her design job with no plan at all but started working on Custom Made 3 months later….
We caught up with Anna for find out more about how she runs her creative business, her inspirations and her typical working day.
Why is creativity important to you?
Creativity has always been important to me; I couldn’t live without it. I started painting and drawing and making things as a kid and never stopped. Some people love running; I love making things. I am lucky to be able to be creative most days and I’ve worked hard to create a career and environment where I’m able to work that way.
What inspires your design process?
Inspiration comes from all over the place. Sometimes I will look at a swatch of acetate and the pattern will spark a million ideas or I can sit and look at a colour palette I have put together and that will start the spark. Or I can sit and draw shapes.
Can you describe your typical working day?
Every day is different and it depends what I’m working on. I sell Custom Made via our online shop and wholesale to lots of lovely stores. So typically, I start at 9am with emails to customers and printing off online orders to be shipped that day. If I’m working on wholesale orders, the rest of the day will be spent making pieces for those if they aren’t in stock already.
If I’m working on design my time is spent between drawing in illustrator and my work bench. I have a special little section in the studio for design work where I have raw materials and colour swatches and work in progress laid out. This little space is really important for the work I do with acrylic as I usually cut a ton of shapes and then play with them with the metal pieces. I start the design process with paper cut outs and go from there. Finished pieces never look like how my initial designs start. I like that process.
“Inspiration comes from all over the place... pattern will spark a million ideas ...or a colour palette I have put together. ”
Then around all that there’s stock takes, accounts, purchasing raw materials, photographing products (I have a little light booth that’s permanently up in the studio) working on posts for social media, updating the website etc.
I finish work at around 5-5.30pm every day unless I have big orders or I’m working up to a trade fair, or its November and December!
Do you find having a dedicated studio gives you a more focussed approach?
Yes, absolutely. I know this may be a luxury you can’t have when you start a business but as soon as you can afford a studio, get one. If you have a spare bedroom- perfect! It means you can have dedicated space for your work and therefore a quiet place away from everyday stuff to focus. We bought our house specifically with this in mind. The ground floor is dedicated to working where both my partner and I each have a studio.
How do you juggle your home life with work? Do you have any tips for those in a similar position?
When I started Custom Made I thought I had to work ALL THE TIME to make it successful. This is not my personal experience. When you are working, work hard and then take time off. You can’t work if you are burnt out. You also can’t function properly. It took me quite a while to realise this but now I have the work life balance sorted.
What are the biggest lessons you have learned since running your business?
I cannot stress enough, do your accounts. You need to know how much money you are making all the time. You can’t tell by guessing and you need to know before you get to the end of the year. It’s the only way you can improve. As soon as I got on top of my money on a daily to weekly basis, that’s when the business really started to thrive. Also, enjoy the process and enjoy working on what you love.
Find more of Anna’s work on her website & instagram.
