Paralyzed at 13, Painter Learned to Hold Brush in Her Mouth, Leading to a Beautiful Business Venture with Her Sister (Exclusive)

Emily Kilby paints pottery pieces made by her sister Olivia for their shared business, Wheely Good Ceramics

• Emily Kilby learned to paint with a brush in her mouth after she became paralyzed at age 13. Uninspired by working on paper, she began to paint ceramics made by her sister Olivia

• In 2022, the British sisters launched their own business, Wheely Good Ceramics, to sell the pottery they make together

• In addition to turning a profit from their creations, the collaboration has allowed the sisters to spend quality time together in a way that works with Emily's disability and Olivia's creative pursuits

Emily Kilby has loved art since a young age, growing up with an interest in creating fine artwork. After a virus attacked her spinal cord and left her immobile from the waist down at age 13, Emily continued to create with a paintbrush held in her mouth. But without the functional use of her hands, it became a challenge to work in more classic, fine styles.

"I can't draw a straight line with my mouth, so it was very frustrating," the English painter, now 26, tells PEOPLE. "The control is a lot harder, but it does just take practice."

Her mother and sister Olivia, a 24-year-old ceramicist, encouraged Emily to paint at their home in Hertfordshire, a county north of London. The family felt the process of making art would be good for Emily's mind, but she became bored and discouraged when working on blank pages.

"I did it on paper every now and then, probably a few times during summer every year. But I just found it a bit too daunting [on paper]," Emily recalls. "It's just a large canvas to fill and I never knew what to do with it."

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One day, Olivia offered her older sister a new canvas: one of her handmade pottery pieces.

"I said, 'Why not try it on this instead?' " Olivia tells PEOPLE. For their first project together, Emily painted butterflies on a jug made by Olivia. They gave the piece to their eldest sister as an engagement gift.

From that moment on, the sisters started collaborating on a number of ceramics, from planters and vases to espresso cups and more. Eventually, once they honed their respective painting and pottery skills, Emily had the idea to start selling some of the hand-crafted and painted items they worked on together, a plan which has since become their shared business, Wheely Good Ceramics.

Since launching their online shop in 2022, Emily and Olivia have worked on pottery collections inspired by sea life and summer fruits, and they've been commissioned to make special pieces by request. They sell from their website, but they've also accumulated more than 249,000 followers between their TikTok and Instagram pages.

They sell items consistently, and with every piece, both women are improving their craft, they say. But even before achieving that material success, Olivia was already proud of finding the perfect, fittingly punny name for their collaborative business. She notes to PEOPLE that Wheely Good Ceramics is more clever than most realize: it alludes to both Emily's wheelchair and Olivia's pottery wheel.

"I just thought of it and then we just stuck with it," says Olivia.

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As two young entrepreneurs, the sisters admit that they're still figuring out how to navigate the business side of their project. Initially, they priced their inventory too low for the amount of time and effort that went into each piece. Items sold quickly, but the worth didn't match the work, says Olivia.

"We're just trying to find a way to actually put a proper value on the time it takes for Emily to paint it," she explains. "We live in a society where people want cheap stuff quick. Our stuff's obviously slow-produced ... people probably don't understand the time that goes into things and the talent from Em painting with her mouth, but we're still finding our way."

Olivia isn't uncomfortable figuring it out as they go, though. Before Wheely Good Ceramics, she was still sorting out her future. After earning a degree in politics from the University of Bristol, she found herself feeling "low mentally," as she described on the About Us page on their business' website.

"When I was just trying to find a job in politics or something, I was then teaching myself [ceramics] as well because getting a job was such a lengthy process," she tells PEOPLE. "I never got one ... you get so demoralized and so down. I had a degree from a good university and I couldn't get anything in London. It was so competitive."

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Ceramics gave Olivia some distance from her job woes, giving her mental wellness a boost. She became less interested in a corporate career and wanted to lean into a creative route. Once she realized Emily enjoyed painting what came off the wheel, Olivia took any opportunity to spend that quality time with her sister.

They enjoyed the collaborative process even before they decided the pieces were good enough to sell. Looking back on the Christmas season in 2022, Olivia remembers how she opted to stick by Emily's side making art, even if everyone else was off doing other activities.

"When all the family went off for a pub walk or something, we got mugs out and started painting that together because Emily couldn't join in with the walk," Olivia tells PEOPLE. "Compared to other siblings, they could probably go out ... or go do sport together. But as me and Emily haven't got that anymore, it was more so to have something to do together."

Today, Wheely Good Ceramics has further connected the sisters and given Olivia her dream full-time job. Emily, however, balances her contributions to the business with her career in aviation. She works on an accessibility team, helping airports and airlines remove barriers to people with disabilities.

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Emily joins her sister in their at-home studio to paint pottery in the evenings and on weekends, and Olivia often records these moments to share on their social media pages. Their posts have helped business and brought them into a network of people with stories like their own.

"People go out their way to message or DM us their stories. It's nice seeing someone in our position [saying], 'You've really helped with this, really helped with that,' " says Olivia. "Or even mums with kids — and one of them has got a disability and they're only young — when she's like, 'This gives me hope that in the future my child will have the siblings look out for them.' "

Eventually, the sisters tells PEOPLE they hope to expand their business to include such people with similar experiences, perhaps through an art therapy branch of the company.

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But with a bright future ahead of Wheely Good Ceramics, Emily and Olivia are adamant about keeping the production in house, with each piece carefully made. They have no intentions to start getting Emily's designs printed onto ceramics, even though she doesn't have as much time to paint as her sister does to work on the wheel. Such a plan "ruins the reason why we're doing it," says Olivia.

"I think it's just trying to find a balance of growing it but also keeping the origins of why we started it," she adds. "We don't want to lose the magic of what we are doing."

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