Craft:

I love crafting projects that bring joy and silliness into people's lives. Felt is the perfect media to make projects that capture happiness. The soft, dense fabric is where many of us got our childhood starts in crafting, and the two contributors of Feltique that I'd like to introduce you to today both maintain a perspective that brings joy to art.

Hillary Gillick contributed one of the most unusual and creative toys in the book: the Cupcake Chomper. She calls them Darwin's Chomper on her whimsical Etsy site, or by their proper Latin name, Os Crustum Minora (Little Cake Mouth). The little creatures have tiny cupcakes on their tongues and sport giant teeth and feet. The Chompers are so fun. Their photo shoot incorporated baking supplies, and at the end of the shoot, the room and half the gear was covered in sugar, flour, and sprinkles. For being inanimate felt toys, they encourage trouble quite well. The Chompers themselves are immaculately rendered and are just one species in Hillary's strange menagerie.

She also creates art depicting the Squiddy Bear, Schnoozle Doot Doot, and more. Her work is definitely offbeat, but it could not be more perfectly executed. Her needle felting skills are on point. The sculptures are extremely dense and smooth without a single fiber out of place. Hillary lives in Seattle with her real-life lizard pets Kali and Salvador Mali. Please visit her (very well priced!) Etsy shop and her Flickr photostream.

The AnthroPoMorphCo characters created by Joan De Lurio showcase an amazing sense of humor combined with a successful indy business. Her Mental Vegetables grace buttons, earrings, stationary, and more. Joan's contribution to Feltique is the Appalachian Clutch, an adorable woodland owl coin purse that sits inside the hollow end of a tree trunk clutch. The project is a beautiful combination of her characters and her knitting.

Here's a bit about what she's been up to: "We're gearing up our veggie garden for planting very soon, but the water that surrounds it has already produced a bumper crop of toads and frogs and fishes (for friending, not eating!). I spend an undo amount of time introducing myself to all of them. Most of the rest of the day you'll find me making stuff for the shop, running to the post office, feeding the cat, telling the cat he was just fed, feeding us, telling the cat he does not need anymore food, and then sitting on the couch between beau and said cat, knitting." Check her out online at anthropomorphco.com.