Rainbow Loom bracelet maker, 9, attracts worldwide attention

PITTSBURGH – She has 2.4 million views on her YouTube channel, a shout-out from Jimmy Kimmel and an app in her name. She's also just 9 years old.

What has she been doing with her free time?

Ally Aufman, a third-grader at Sewickley Academy, a Pittsburgh private school, jumped head first into the recent Rainbow Loom bracelet-making craze. The colorful rubber-band bracelets are on the wrists and ankles of kids across the country. Developed by Cheong Choon Ng, an engineer for Nissan, and his brother, Cheong Yeow Ng, the loom was named Toy of the Year by the Toy Industry Association.

Not long after getting the loom as a gift, Ally went from casual weaver to creative force. She had mastered the designs offered by Rainbow Loom and wanted to make her own. She's invented more than 20 new patterns. Inspiration comes from trying variations of other patterns and wondering what will happen when they are flipped, inverted and reversed.

Ally and her mother, Kim, started recording YouTube video tutorials (www.youtube.com/user/AllysBracelets) in June as a way to share Ally's creations. Soon, they were getting thousands of hits and comments. Her most popular video has 1.2 million views.

It's been a lesson in business and communication as much as artistry, the family says. The Aufmans sometimes get nasty comments, mostly out of frustration from other loomers looking to follow her instructions. As the view counts climb, they say the videos are getting better, too.

"Ally and I joke, we didn't know a million people would watch these or we would have been a bit more careful," said her father, Ed, a financial adviser.

"It's fun to see the comments," Ally said. "They keep popping up, one second ago, just now."

She's also teaching classes at school and at a toy store in Cranberry, Pa. "I like helping people and making friends so they keep coming back and get really good, too."

Recently, she taught students how to make a rubber-band moustache, just one of the new projects created by loomers such as Ally. She teaches how to make loom action figures, a popular project with the boys.

Two of her designs, Carnation and Taffy Twist, are featured in Rainbow Loom's book, "The Loomatic's Interactive Guide to the Rainbow Loom," published in 2013. Ally is one of just two children with designs in the book.

The idea for the iPhone app came after finding one from someone else that used many of Ally's designs and videos. With a little help from her father and an app-generating service "Allys Bracelets" sells for 99 cents on the iTunes App Store. The app is downloaded 20 times a day on average, enough to pay for development costs.