Teen uses TikTok to launch skateboard design business

A 16-year-old girl has combined her passions for art and skating to launch a business painting skateboards.

Ruby Parker's TikTok videos of her creative designs have had hundreds of thousands of views.

The Bristol artist was inspired by her boyfriend to take up skateboarding last year and began posting her board designs in October.

Ruby has been working on developing her business at the same time as studying for her A-levels.

Her enterprise, Fuzzy Decks, took off when she posted a cat design that was on the upper, griptape side of the board. It has had more than 480,000 views on the social media platform.

She said: "I think people really liked it because it was something a little bit different."

Her videos show how her work develops from sketches through to the finished paintings. She works with brushes and acrylics but also uses paint pens for the finer details.

"TikTok is a really good platform for getting your work out there. I watch a lot of other artists on TikTok, it's quite inspirational," Ruby said.

A skull and butterfly design is the artist's most recent piece, which was painted for her friend Sol.

"It's crazy, it's so good" said 15-year-old Sol.

"I don't know if I want to skate on it, I might just hang it up in my room because I don't want to mess the design up."

Ruby has worked on her boards alongside studying online.

"It can be a bit tricky with school as well but it's been ok so far," she said.

She is painting several new commissions and hopes to develop the business further.

" I would like to do designs for a bigger skate company and have them mass produced," she added.