BUSINESS SOARS FOR CRAFTY ETHAN

AN 11-YEAR-OLD boy with autism has turned his obsession for handicraft into a booming business that has him rolling in pocket money.

Ethan Arnold began tinkering away in his stepfather’s shed from an early age and by the time he was 10 years old, he was already an accomplished artisan. He founded Bits & Bobs by Ethan this year to sell off the bits and pieces cluttering the shed and so far he has sold more than 100 painstakingly crafted masterpieces.

He started getting requests for custom orders and now he has commissions pouring in.

“It just kept going and going, so I’ve been making more and more,” Ethan said.

“I want to do it when I’m older. I love art.” So far he’s spent his revenue on a Nintendo Switch and he’s saving up money for a trip to Queensland . Ethan’s mum Megan said she realised her son’s mind was “amazing” when he took apart a pen, figured out its internal mechanism and repurposed it into a functioning Spider-Man web shooter. Megan said she had no idea where he got his creativity from, as neither parent was artistically talented.

“He’s always been creative since he was little. He has a lot of ideas,” she said.