My biggest embroidery project so far has been the giraffe in the round black frame. He measures roughly 11.5 inches from the tip of his beaded ossicones to the base of the neck that goes under the frame. There’s about 100 to 120 hours of work in the embroidery alone. Some smaller pieces can take 25 to 30 hours but the larger ones average out at about 70 to 80 hours.

When it comes to the challenges I think the hardest part is getting the colours right. I work from lots of different reference photos so I can’t ever trust one image to give me a true interpretation of that color due to different camera or editing settings as well as monitor settings. Also when you look at my giraffe, for example, that’s around 20 to 30 shades of brown, so what looks like a few variations of one color is actually many, many more.

The best thing about being an artist is doing something that I love as a job. But also knowing that my work can put a huge smile on someone’s face when they open a package from me.

I have already tried lots of art mediums, I have always painted and drawn since I was a small child. I used to make small 3D birds and mice that were very popular, one of my mice sat on Garcia’s desk in Criminal Minds for the last couple of seasons. I haven’t tried glass work but would love to try that! I’d also like to work in ceramics but right now I’m pretty busy!

When it comes to the art process I tend to enjoy all of it at different times. There is an excitement to deciding on the subject, then research. When I’m sewing, it is so relaxing and calming that I feel the benefit of that quiet work almost immediately. The beading is another high point, there is this mass of sparkly, shiny objects in a dish and then within hours, they are a twinkling rhino horn or vibrant flamingo beak. It’s a magical process.

I have a Facebook page for my work which has about 13k awesome followers but Instagram seems to be a better fit for my embroideries and is also reaching a whole new audience of people who don’t use Facebook as much. Plus there’s a huge community of friendly and supportive artists on there and it just seemed to be a natural move.

I always get such a lot of positive reactions to my work, especially with the very popular animals like chickens and giraffes. They are also the ones that sell within hours of being added to my shop. I also get lots of really lovely messages from people who have just started to embroider and I love talking to them, hearing that someone new is going to be working in a craft that has been around for hundreds of years. They even found embroideries in the tomb of Tutankhamen!