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Move Over, Martha

Ashley Hackshaw's crafty blog and business inspire

by Christina Couch | November 29, 2011

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To readers, she's a crafting genius. To the public, she's the artist and DIY superstar who nearly wasn't. And to four-year-old Sienna, she's just mom. For Ashley Hackshaw, author of the wildly popular Lil Blue Boo crafting blog and Babble's most creative Mominee, creating fun and truly elegant art projects for a living happened almost by accident. Approximately 65,000 visitors per week frequent Hackshaw's blog, both for the cuter-than-cute designs and to follow along as the Palm Desert, California-based mother of one navigates family matters, entrepreneurship and, most recently, a battle with cancer.

Despite Lil Blue Boo's success, Hackshaw herself began in a less creative field. Double majoring in math and art at Wake Forest University, Hackshaw took a position with First Union bank out of college where she stayed for six years. In 2001, Hackshaw returned to Wake Forest to get her MBA and began counseling undergrad art students on developing business skills to help them stay economically afloat. Free studio time was part of the perks.

"I started to really get back into my art," she says. " ... one day I just had this feeling. I mean I didn't even tell my husband that I was going to quit. I just walked into work one day and said, 'You know what? I'd really like to leave for three months.'"

Leaving her high-powered investment banking gig allowed Hackshaw the time to get inspired.

"I knew after the first week that I wasn't going back," she explains. " ... You wake up to go to a job that you think you like, but it's really only because they tell you the time to be there, but when you have to wake up on your own, you kind of figure out, this is what I love to do."

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A month later, Hackshaw's husband quit his job and the pair moved from North Carolina to California. The day they moved in, Ashley found out she was pregnant. Ashley started giving sewing lessons to neighborhood girls and that's when the idea for a blog struck. Lil Blue Boo launched to an audience of none in March of 2009, but really took off once Ashley began posting patterns readers could use at home.

"For me, that's kind of what I live for," she says. "I can keep this to myself and never share it with anybody and that's no fun ... or I can publish it and people can make what they want from it."

Since its launch, Lil Blue Boo has expanded to include a line of patterns and limited-edition clothing, all made in-house by Hackshaw's support team. The site currently supports Hackshaw, as well as two full-time employees, and reels in approximately 140,000 weekly pageviews. Ashley chalks the success up to her passion and employees.

"I just do what I absolutely love and what I think that people will respond to," she says. "... And it seems to work out."

Lil Blue Boo readers aren't just there for crafts. They're there for Hackshaw's stories, to get glimpses of her family life, or to watch Sienna grow up and witness her ever-evolving dance moves. Which is why the Internet responded with an outpouring of support when Ashley announced in mid-October that doctors had found cancerous cells had spread to nine spots on her lungs and one on her liver, the result of a molar pregnancy caused by a miscarriage she experienced the previous July.

"The only word I heard was cancer," she says. "You never know how you're going to react to a call like that. My mind was blank. I said, 'Okay, whatever I have to do.'"

Hackshaw was scheduled for surgery at Loma Linda University Cancer Center, but was admitted to the ER the night before when her tumor burst through her uterus.

"That was the one point that it hit me," she says. "'Okay, maybe this is a lot more serious than I thought it was.'"

The tumor clotted and Hackshaw was sent home until her medical team could be assembled for surgery. She returned in late October for an outpatient procedure to remove cancerous cells.

"I went in thinking, 'Okay, I'm going to wake up in an hour and then we can eat dinner and go home.' I ended up waking up the next morning with a tube in my throat in ICU," Ashley says. "I heard the nurses talking about a hysterectomy and I knew they had taken my uterus out. My family was going back and forth over who was going to tell me. One of the first things I said was, 'I already know.'"

Hackshaw is currently undergoing chemotherapy, blogging all the while about her prognosis, her family's coping and projects you can do from bed. Even in the wake of her own illness, she's giving the Babble prize money to Shelter From the Storm, Palm Desert's only domestic abuse shelter, and working with her family to figure out their next step.

"I'm still in shock," she says. "We were trying to have another kid ... but I believe everything happens for a reason. We just have to approach each day as a gift, and things will unfold the way they are supposed to. I've been given an opportunity to share these experiences, even the nitty-gritty ones, and I can't waste that."