Ailsa completed the Bachelor of Dramatic Art in Design (NIDA) in 2003. Recent design credits include Kimberly Akimbo (costume design, State Theatre Company South Australia/MTC), Housework, Jack Maggs and The Puzzle (State Theatre Company South Australia), A Quiet Language (ADT, costume design), Watershed (Opera Australia) and The Marriage of Figaro (State Opera South Australia).

Design credits for State Theatre Company South Australia include: The Dictionary of Lost Words (costume design), Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Girls and Boys, Single Asian Female, Chalkface, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia (costume design), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Ripcord (set design), Gaslight, Jasper Jones, End of the Rainbow, Sense and Sensibility, Switzerland, The 39 Steps, Beckett Triptych, The Importance of Being Earnest, In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, The Ham Funeral, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), The Price and The Cripple of Inishmaan.

Other design credits include Marrow and Tracker (ADT, costume design), Dido and Aeneas (State Opera South Australia), A Christmas Carol (Ensemble), Boxing Day BBQ (Ensemble), The Boy Who Talked to Dogs (Slingsby, costume design), Emil and The Detectives (Slingsby, costume design), Cloudstreet! (State Opera South Australia, costume design). Ailsa was the recipient of the 2011 Mike Walsh Fellowship.