Some woodworkers spend decades planning the perfect shop, collecting tools, and dreaming of the day they’ll finally have time to build. Ashley Wooten took a different approach.
“I’ve kind of been running my business on vibes,” she says with a laugh. “What’s a business plan? I don’t know. Never seen her.”
Wooten is the maker behind Ashwood & Hawke, creating everything from do-it-yourself mosaics, custom business signs, and original scroll-sawn artwork to cabinetry, furniture, and full installations. She teaches woodworking classes with women, shares her process with thousands of followers online, and makes her living doing something she’d never attempted before 2021. In fact, she’d never touched power tools before then.
Looking back, her success wasn’t built on luck or a perfectly mapped-out business strategy. It started with something much simpler — a decision.
From Creative Outlet to First Commission
Before custom woodworking entered the picture, Wooten had always derived meaning through creative work. As a hairstylist, she spent years helping clients express themselves through color, shape, and design. Later, after becoming a stay-at-home mom and homeschooling her two sons, she started looking for another creative outlet. The spark came unexpectedly.
After moving to Tennessee, she finally had something she’d never had before: a full-size garage. Around the same time, she happened upon an online video on mosaic craft. In it, the instructor showed how to glue dimensional lumber together to create a geometric wood mosaic.
“I remember thinking, “I could do that.’” That seems easy.” So she bought a few boards, followed the video, and made one. Then something interesting happened. A friend saw her finished piece in a social media post and asked if Wooten would make one to ship to her instead of ordering from an online retailer. Her first commission had arrived almost by accident.
“I kind of went to school on that one,” she says, laughing as she remembers trying to ship a five-foot mosaic from Tennessee to California. “I lost a lot of my income on that project.” But that wasn’t her ultimate takeaway. She viewed it as proof that someone valued her work enough to pay for it. That realization changed everything for this beginning woodworker.
“I've kind of been running my business on vibes. What's a business plan? I don't know. Never seen her.”
— Ashley Wooten
Learning by Doing
Unlike many woodworkers, Wooten didn’t grow up in a shop or learn from family members. She never attended carpentry classes or served an apprenticeship. For the first couple of years, her education came almost entirely from YouTube, Instagram, and an inclination to experiment.
“As weird as it sounds, you see somebody trying something online and think, ‘Oh, that’s how you do that. Let me try it.’” Every project became another lesson. Some techniques worked immediately. Others required ripping apart hours of work and starting over.
She eventually spent time working in two professional woodshops, first sanding and flattening live-edge slabs for a table company, then helping build custom cabinetry with a friend. By then she’d already developed the habit that continues to work today. She learns by making.
It’s also why she rarely sketches personal projects before building them. “I kind of just let it come together as I’m making it.” That philosophy carries into the mosaic craft classes she now teaches.
When asked how to make do-it-yourself mosaics, she says “Start in the middle and let the mosaic tell you what it wants to be.” For Wooten, creativity isn’t about controlling every detail before the first cut. It’s about believing in the process enough to discover something along the way.
From a Hobby to a Business
For the first few years, woodworking paid for itself. A commission meant a new scroll saw or other tool. A sign sold meant new materials. The pressure was low because it wasn’t responsible for supporting her family. Then life changed.
Adapting to life after her marriage ended, Wooten faced a much different challenge: turning a growing side business into the sole source of income for herself and her two young sons.
“It went from something fun that I got to do in my garage to something that had to be sustainable.” The transition wasn’t immediate. She continued working part-time in custom woodworking shops while building Ashwood & Hawke during every spare moment she could find.
Eventually, though, she realized she had reached another crossroads. The days each week she spent working for someone else were also the only days she had to focus on her own business. To grow, she had to make another decision. She chose herself. “I just had to decide to do it.”
Soon afterward, opportunities began arriving in ways that still surprise her. First, a custom desk commission became one of the largest projects she’d ever built. Then, one of her pricier pieces sold through her website while she was literally unloading boxes into her new home. And she was invited to teach woodworking classes at a major corporate event for Scout Motors.
Wooten doesn’t claim those moments happened because of luck. She believes they happened because her mindset changed. Instead of treating woodworking as a hobby, she began to treat it like a career. “I had to show up like it was a business.”
A Style of Her Own
Although Wooten still creates the mosaic craft that first put her work on the map, her portfolio grows more diverse with every project.
- Business logos
- Custom signage
- Scroll-sawn artwork
- Intarsia
- Furniture
Each custom woodworking project teaches something new. Lately, she’s found inspiration in an unlikely combination of places. From traditional tattoo artwork to the dramatic mountainscapes of Scotland where she recently vacationed, she blends influences into pieces she hopes to create between commissions.
“I have all these ideas floating around,” she says. “I just need the time to make them.” The balance between client work and personal art is one she’s still figuring out. Commissions pay the bills, while personal work pushes her creatively. Finding room for both remains one of the biggest challenges of running a successful one-person business.
More Than Social Media
Like many modern makers, Wooten’s business depends on more than what happens inside the shop. Instagram has become both a portfolio and a marketing department. It’s where customers discover her work. It’s where companies find potential collaborators.
It’s also where she hopes to inspire other people, especially women woodworkers, to believe they can build something for themselves. “I want to show women that they can do this too.”
She understands the fear that often keeps people from making big changes. She lived it. After stepping away from a previous career to raise her family, rebuilding a business capable of supporting her and her children started to feel overwhelming. “There were panic attacks. There was fear. I didn’t know how I was going to do it.”
Two years later, she’s doing exactly that. Not because someone gave her permission. Because she decided she would.
“I want to show women that they can do this too.”
— Ashley Wooten
There’s Room for Everyone
Spend a few minutes talking with Wooten, and a meaningful message shines through, “Stop comparing yourself to others.” Whether she’s teaching beginners how to make do-it-yourself mosaics in a workshop or encouraging followers online, she sees the same obstacle over and over.
“People spend so much time worrying about whether someone else is already doing it better that they never start.” Social media only amplifies that tendency. “It’s really easy to look at other people and think, ‘Wow, they already did that better.’”
She’s learned to look at it differently. If someone else can build something beautiful, that isn’t evidence that you shouldn’t try. It’s evidence that it’s possible. That lesson comes through clearly in her woodworking classes with women, where each student starts with the same materials but finishes with something completely different.
“We all have our own version of creativity.” That’s why she encourages new makers not to imitate someone else’s style, including hers. “Make your art. Don’t make my art.” Authenticity, she believes, is what people connect with most.
Just Start
Ask Wooten what advice she’d give women woodworkers, and she doesn’t talk about the right saw or the perfect first project. Instead, she returns to the same idea that has guided nearly every major decision in her own life. “Just start.”
Not because everything will go according to plan. In fact, it probably won’t. Projects will fail, ideas will change, and mistakes will happen. But waiting until you feel completely ready usually means waiting forever.
“Nobody’s going to stop you,” she says. “Nine times out of ten, the person stopping you is you.” For someone who jokes about running a business on vibes, that’s perhaps the biggest surprise of all. Underneath the good humor is a maker who has spent the past few years proving that confidence doesn’t come before action. Sometimes, it comes because you were willing to start.
CHAD McCLUNG
Chad is a woodworker with nearly 20 years of experience in woodworking and home improvement, covering these topics as a how-to writer, editor, and photographer. He is the former editor-in-chief of Woodcraft Magazine. When not in the shop, Chad is probably adding to a Blu-ray collection that rivals his tool collection.