We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Francisnelli Bailoni dos Santos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Francisnelli, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
My most meaningful projects are definitely the custom embroidery animal portraits I embroider.
Most of the animals I portray have crossed the rainbow bridge and are given as gifts to a person missing them dearly.
My portraits are meant to touch their souls and bring them a bit of solace in a moment of sadness.
Francisnelli, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve got into embroidery because my love for hand sewing and also due to my background and career in costume making. Basically, I’ve sewing my own clothes since I was 15 y-0 and had worked in the entertainment industry sewing costumes for actors for over 30 years.
I am a self taught embroiderer and started embroidering flowers and simple shapes but that got me bored pretty quickly. So I got myself a few books in a technique called thread painting and taught myself a new skill. Thread painting is basically the only technique I use for my animal portraits and miniature animal earrings. I also embroider with another technique called Stumpwork which is like a 3D embroidery technique.
Now, I mainly embroider tiny animals jewellery pieces and commissions for custom animal portraits, that provides my customer with a realistic embroider portrait of their furry/feathered “kids”
I am very proud of my skill level. It took me about 3 years of practicing thread painting to get to the level I am now.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
I myself am a great supporter of small businesses.
I shop small as much as I can. When I participate on markets, I always support my fellow artists.
I think as a society, we should encourage others to follow their dreams because people are truly their best when they are happy. And they are happy when they follow their dreams.
I am a dreamer and my dreams give me hope, courage and resilience to keep pushing myself. I don’t let anyone tell me I can’t do a thing.
When we buy from small businesses, we are nurturing their dreams and secretly (or not) encouraging them to keep on going, to be resilience in their worse possible moments.
I know how hard it is to own a small business and all the times that I felt like giving up just to have someone telling me how my animal portraits are amazing (they get confused by painting all the time) and how it has made a great gift to someone they know.
So my customers keep me going and I want to do the same to my fellows artists.
So if you can, go to craft markets and buy from those artists. There are amazing talented artists out there.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Animals are a big part of my life, not only my dogs and cat, but all animals.
So my goal is to be able to help a bigger number of animal sanctuaries in a future.
Also I’d like to have a backyard again one day so I can have more dogs :-) 
Contact Info:
- Website: https://myprettybabi.com
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