This Grocery Store Opens In LA Next Month – But Everything Is Made of Felt

One year after debuting her all-felt bodega in New York City, British artist Lucy Sparrow is gearing up to showcase even more of the magic that happens when she fashions food out of colorful, fuzzy fabric.

Her latest artistic undertaking – Sparrow Mart – is set to debut in Los Angeles at the Standard Hotel in August and will be stocked with 31,000 unique handmade items like chicken breasts, Ramen Noodle Soup, batteries, cheese and basically anything you’d expect to see in the aisles of your favorite convenience store.

Equal parts quirky and cute, Sparrow’s faux food creations are incredibly popular. Back in June of last year, the artist’s sculpture-filled 12,000-square-foot shop – an art installation dubbed “8 Till Late” – shut down a week earlier than expected after quickly selling out of its 9,000 items, which included everything from Cheetos and Spam to home cleaning products and pregnancy tests.

In January of 2014, Sparrow’s Kickstarter campaign brought in more than $13,500, which she then used to revamp an old London newsstand into The Cornershop, a store filled where everything down to the cash register was made of felt. After starting her love affair with felt at the age of eight, Sparrow now creates all of her pieces on a farm in Essex called “The Felt Cave.”

Of her ambitious creative projects, Sparrow said, “You get out of it what you put in.” She adds, “You have to work probably ten times harder than you’ve ever worked in any paying job in your life. It might take ten years, it might take fifteen years, but when it does happen, it will 100 percent be worth it.”

You can see more of Sparrow’s projects on Instagram, and if you’re interested in making your own mini-collection of felt food, here’s a list of free tutorials to get you started.