Hello! I’m Chloe, and I work with felt to make decorations and 3D felt animals.
After completing my art foundation course in 2010 I spent several years working with mixed media, including making hand painted and stitched decorations. Eventually my creative practice evolved to working primarily with hand embroidered hoop art, creating original pieces and designing patterns, until 2018 when I was approached by an artist friend and loyal customer from my mixed media and painted decoration making days - they asked if I still made decorations, and if so, could I make a set for them? I no longer had the supplies I'd used before, so set to thinking about the best way to make this set of decorations - did I order up some new acrylic paint and start again, or try something different this time?
In the end, tantalised by a wonderful selection of felt colours I found online, I decided to use felt to create the set of decorations. I enjoyed the process so much that I continued to create many more decorations, and now work solely with felt.
I have had the opportunity to work on some wonderful commissions, including a request to create a set of custom decorations for artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins; Clive was in the process of illustrating a retelling of Hansel and Gretel by poet laureate Simon Armitage, and tasked me with producing a set of decorations based on his illustrations of Lebkuchen biscuits.
I have also worked to create several decorations inspired by people's beloved pets, often as memorial pieces. I always feel it is a particular privilege to be asked to work on these.
In recent years my practice has evolved to include the creation of poseable 3D felt animals including so far horses, camels, a chameleon, a bird, a lion and a buffalo, to name a few! These are a joy to create - I start off with an idea of what I'd like to make, along with some drawings, but even with a plan of what I'd like the end result to be, I find as I work on them they take on their own very unique characters. All of my poseable 3D felt animals are sent on their way to their new homes with an embossed certificate of authenticity and care card.
I also create the occasional 2D piece; these are either framed or finished to be small, free hanging wall pieces.
All of my felt pieces are entirely hand stitched, hand beaded, and all felt pieces are cut by hand.
I create original pieces to offer for sale which I list in my shop, and also make them to commission; if you have something in mind, please do feel free to pop over to my commissions page for more information, or get in touch.
You can find out more, and see more of my work by visiting my website or joining me over on Instagram.
To get updates about when I am listing new work to my shop or opening commissions, and for some occasional studio musings, you can subscribe here by clicking the button below. I promise I won’t send lots of emails!
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