Meet Ashley Earl, owner of Eight Armed Designs & artist Sara Kelley, art goblin

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ashley Earl, owner of Eight Armed Designs & artist Sara Kelley, art goblin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ashley Earl, owner of Eight Armed Designs & artist, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
Ashley: I wanted to be an artist when I was little, but my family encouraged more traditional career goals. While taking class for a very unrelated degree (biology), I took art classes for fun. I racked up enough credits for an associate’s in fine arts, and through that degree programme, had to participate in juried shows where I sold many of my pieces. I have always found art to be a great way to both relax and accomplish something tangible at the same time. I’ve worked as a professional cake decorator, silversmith, and potter, taught cake decorating classes, and now as owner/artist for my own business. Art brings me a lot of joy, and has helped me meet some really neat people- my business partner and I met and the first thing I asked her to do was come over and make fabric snowflakes with me, and here we are 5 years later doing this art life together! Sara: I chose to pursue an artistic career because I had too many projects in my house and needed to find a way to fund new hobbies. I do a lot of things to keep myself busy and keep my mind from racing and it turns out that I’m actually pretty decent at some of them. I found a best friend who had the exact same problem with her projects and we teamed up to make our problem not a problem anymore!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Our tagline/slogan is “Two autistic besties selling their hyperfixations to make people happy”, and it embodies exactly what we do. As an autistic creator and business owner, there are many challenges we have to overcome- markets are overstimulating at times, the hyperfixation is borderline obsession, and trying to mask autistic behaviours and appear “normal” is very draining. We have learned what we need during a show to mitigate the number of meltdowns we have. We have headphones to block noise if it’s too much, and we both wear name tags that tell people Ashley is awkwardly autistic and Sara is pleasantly autistic, and we have gotten loads of positive feedback on them, and help people to understand that we do have challenges and we’re not trying to be rude. But it’s also our superpower. Because we fixate, we produce top notch work that is carefully and thoroughly researched and produced, so when you buy from us, you know you’re getting a quality product. At our live shows, we have a few items that make their way into our shop that we don’t list, but our bread and butter is handmade watrcolour paints and unique stickers. Sara makes all of our paints by hand using vintage and unwanted makeup. Every single colour is one of a kind, and are an absolute dream to paint with. Ashley spends 4-6 hours a day making designs and producing them with high quality materials. We have a series of funny mental health stickers such as an ostrich screaming “TAKE YOUR MEDS” or guinea pigs reminding you to “fight intrusive thoughts” that we think are really cool and sell really well.. We’ve learned a lot of lessons since the business opened. One of those lessons is that it’s okay to let something go if it’s not working out how you thought it would. For our very first market, Ashley was adamant they needed to have snow globe tumblers to sell. The materials ate up a lot of the budget, and they were very time consuming to finish. We stayed up until 5am trying to finish them to take with us to our 8am show. We got there and the majority of them ended up leaking before anyone even had a chance to inquire about them. If the thing you are doing is not working, put it down for a bit and prioritize your mental health over your profits.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We are based about 90 miles from Denver in Wyoming. It’s beautiful country ‘round these here parts, so Monday we would pack a cooler with sandwich things and go out to Vedauwoo (vee da voo) and medicine bow national forest and have a picnic near the very unique rock formations. That night we’d eat cheesesteaks from Parkway Pizza in Cheyenne where they make their own bread and it’s delightful. Tuesday we would make the drive out to Estes, stop at The Dam Store, ride the alpine coaster, and eat and stay at the Stanley hotel. Wednesday would be for exploring Rock Mountain National Park and watching the critters of the forest. One of my favourite camping meals is fresh tortillas from Tortilla Factory in Cheyenne, green chili with a chicken breast thrown in, so we would find a spot to have a fire and heat everything up, as long as there wasn’t a fire ban. Thursday morning we would head over to Taco Johns for their immaculate breakfast burrito and take them to Lion’s park where there is a permanent, public treehouse we could eat in. That afternoon would be tattoo appointments, but my artist just moved, so I would try to get in with Skittles at Lyon’s Den Ink. Friday we would go to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and feed giraffes. Raisin’ Cains never disappoints, so that our dinner spot. Saturday we could go look at the murals while we wait for it to be time to go to Casa Bonita (hopefully they’re finally open) and then get a bubble tea from the shop next door. Sunday is taking them back to the airport and exploring the before security area looking for any illumaniti clues.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Our husband/partner make up the other four arms in EightArmedDesings. From helping us to get start up funds, being the only parent to our collective 6 kids, and listening to us hyperfixate on this business, they take so much off of our plates so that we have more time to grow this business. To Josh and Andrew- we love you endlessly and thank every one of our lucky stars that you’re ours.

Website: Eightarmeddesigns.Etsy.com

Instagram: @eightarmeddesigns

Other: TikTok: @eightarmeddesigns

Image Credits
Ashley Earl