Hi Chloe! What is your cillie craft of choice? 

I am an illustrator 

What drew you to such a craft in the first place? 

This is a bit of a convoluted answer but I can’t think of a shorter way to do it authentically. I actually only discovered I  could draw much later in life. I was working in fashion e-commerce and decided to study graphic design part-time as  an upskill. I drew an anchovy for a project, and I kind of looked at it and other people looked at it and it had a bit of  an energy to it. This was an odd experience, and it sounds odd to say, but I actually saw a lot of myself in it. I thought  it was a bit of a fluke but I continued to draw recreationally and the energy continued to show up. I left my job in  2020 not knowing what I was doing next, just knowing it was time to do my own thing; I thought I was going to start  a big multinational business (a tequila company - lols (but not totally lols, I still want to do it maybe one day)). People  started to hit me up for some of my illustrations in the meantime and I thought it would keep me busy until my big  bizniss started moving, but quickly it grew and grew and it was fast attracting really cool, interesting clients and in  about six months, I was doing it full time. 

How does the adjective cillie relate to who you are as a person? 

I feel like I just AM cillie. I’m a very cillie girl to my core. I knew it from when I was young. It’s just something you know.  To try and describe it would be absurd. And I’m not absurd, I’m cillie. 

Tell us a little about your creative process and what inspires you. 

It really varies. I’m never really attached to the way something will turn out, I’m always open to it evolving and I find  the journey of creation very inspiring in itself. When I’m working with a client, I like to extract as much information  from a brief as I can at the start and then I just start drawing and let it come together. Often I’ll look at something  when it’s done and just go WOW did I do that?!!! And then I love getting feedback and just pushing it to new places.  Sometimes I’m pissed off at the feedback (like why tf would you want that) but 9 times out of 10, once it’s integrated,  it’s always better than when it started. It’s humbling and great and it makes me excited to see how collaboration  almost always makes things better. Collaboration inspires me! 

And then, when I’m working on my own little passion projects (like my rhymes), it’s more of a spontaneous  inspiration, it just comes through clear and obvious. Sometimes it’s so obvious, I feel like I have to create it  immediately and share it before someone else does lol. And then people inspire me. I LOVE PEOPLE. People get  a bad wrap, but I think they’re so brilliant, and brave; I love the way they think I love the way they build things, I love  what they can achieve. I love how even when they’re big messes, they’re almost always trying their best (I’m so  proud of you, keep going). People inspire me to no end. I’m also inspired by the fact that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE  ALWAYS. 

What do you find most challenging about your craft? 

Creative work can sometimes feel extremely draining and stressful. Sometimes when I finish a project, I feel like I  need to sleep for days, I feel like I have given birth. Also, I’m a hot mess but when it comes to my work I am a serous  perfectionist, and truly, with creative work, there’s no distinct end, you have to know when to say ‘it’s finished now’  and release the need to push it more. I am sometimes up at night thinking about whether something needs to be  a millimetre to the left and it sucks my energy. I am trying to let go more and just let things be. I think it would be  good to see what it does to my craft too, but for now, I’m just exhausted worrying about whether things should be a  millimeter to the left or if my margins were big enough lol.