It's Time for the Sowa Winter Festival!

Are you ready for holiday shopping season?! I know I am! I ordered tons of new prints, cards, and other fun stuff for all of your gifting needs.

I will be at the Sowa Winter Festival in Boston's South End for all 6 days and would LOVE to see you there!

If you like shopping for holiday gifts in person and love getting tons of different gifts for everyone on your list all in one day, the Sowa Winter Festival is the perfect spot for you to get your gifts this year.

Weekend 1
Friday, November 30: 5 pm – 9 pm
Saturday, December 1: 11 am - 7 pm
Sunday, December 2: 11 am - 5 pm

Weekend 2
Friday, December 7: 5 pm – 9 pm
Saturday, December 8: 11 am - 7 pm
Sunday, December 9: 11 am - 5 pm
 

Sowa Power Station
540 Harrison Ave
Boston, MA 02118

Here's a little blurb from the Sowa Winter Festival website:
Shop from over 100 of the region's best makers and specialty food vendors in the iconic SoWa Power Station. While you stroll, savor our favorite winter cocktails, seasonal craft brews and wines.

The SoWa Winter Festival is family friendly and free to attend. $10 cash parking.

If you’re not in Boston, don’t worry! All of my prints, original paintings, and gifts will be available online too! In fact, most of them already are. Click Here to check out my print collection and use the code SOWA for free shipping!

Starting on Sunday I'll also be sharing my Black Friday gift specials. Think print bundles, discounts, and free gifts! So be sure to check your inbox for those!

Until then, have a great rest of your week!

-Laurel

I Hate Pink But...

As you might've seen on Instagram I've been working on my pie series for the last couple of weeks. I'm painting three 16x20 pies which will make their debut at the Sowa Winter Market starting on Friday November 30th!

What's weird about these paintings is they're very pink... which is odd to me because I don't really consider myself a "pink person." In my head, pink falls into the "cuteness" category, which is a category I'm constantly trying to keep myself out of as 5'2" girl who gets called "cute" and "little" quite frequently. "Cute" isn't usually used as a negative word but it just makes me feel like a little kid. It makes me feel small and like I'm not a twenty-something woman creating an art business out of her apartment.

In my head, I'm an "orange person" or a "teal person" who only uses strong, vibrant colors that make me feel big and bright and in control.

But the thing is, I don't really have as much control over my colors as it seems from the outside. I mean, sure, I'm the artist and my hands are what actually do the painting, but sometimes the painting just demands to be a certain color. I don't really know how best to explain it.

I was explaining this to my mom over text and she asked if it's a voice in my head or a vision or a feeling. I guess it's closest to a vision. I put down the first layer of colors, which are almost always big and bold. But then those colors ask for the next colors and I listen and layer.

And sometimes the colors ask for pink. And I listen. And I end up with a painting made up of bold vibrant layers holding up the softer "cuter" ones. And oddly enough, I think I kind of like it.

Want to see more original paintings? Click here!

Cream Puff, Cherry Pie, and Chocolate Cake: Alex's Commission Story

I've been holding onto this commission for a few weeks, waiting to share it and I'm so excited you get to see it now!

It's a wedding gift from one spouse to the other and it captures all of the food-themed nick names they've used for each other over the years!

It was such a special piece for me to get to create and I wish Alex and Dan all the happiness in the world in this new chapter together!

Scroll down to take a look at the painting process.

It all starts with an idea and sketch!

Once the final version of the sketch is approved, I create the outline for the final piece

Next I fill in the color blocks using vibrant saturated colors to help the whole piece to pop and have a warm glow

Then each part of the painting get painted in detail

Until each piece can shine on its own!

Finally I added the background to pull it all together.

I love painting commissions because I get to hear about the small ways that a shared love of food can make a relationship and a home a warmer place.

What are the special ways that food brings your family or relationships together?

I am still taking holiday commissions for this season, but I have limited spots available.

If you'd like to explore the idea of a commissioned painting, check out my different offerings by CLICKING HERE!

With love,
Laurel

My Hawaiian Family Vacation and My Brand New Milkshake Painting

I hope you’ve been having a great week so far. I was in Hawaii last week with my family and wanted to share some photos from my trip!

My paintings are entirely inspired by my nostalgic food memories made with my family so it was so great to have a whole week of relaxing, catching up with my immediate family and cousins, and doing what we do best: searching for the next thing to eat together. 

I wasn't originally planning to go on this trip, but once my dad called and told me he was planning on surprising my mom with a vow renewal ceremony on the beach to celebrate their 30th anniversary, I couldn’t not go!

We shared a rental house on the north shore of Oahu with my cousins and their adorable and hilarious kids. We went on food adventures: to the Dole Pineapple Plantation for Dole Whip! To Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck for scampi peel and eat shrimp! To a tiny roadside bakery for malasadas! And to Honolulu for Opal Thai! And we enjoyed amazing home cooked meals made by my cousin Simon. 

All in all it was worth every minute of the 12 hour plane ride. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been back in my little studio updating one of my favorite paintings: MY GIANT MILKSHAKE! It needed some more highlights and color and that’s exactly what it got. I love how it turned out!
 

I’ve always loved a good chocolate milkshake. 
CLICK HERE to find out which three iconic milkshakes inspired this painting!

Is my milkshake the piece of art your home has been waiting for? It's 12" x 36" and is ready to hang. Like all of my paintings, it's acrylic on canvas. It's $650 and ships for free from Boston.
CLICK HERE to claim it!

Long Island Vineyards, Brownie Extravaganza, and a Lobster Boil!

 I hope you've been having a great summer so far and that you've been able to make time for the summer activities you waited all winter for! I know for myself, summer weekends fill up so quickly and the time just flies.

Last week I was in Southold on the North Fork of Long Island with Jeff's family for a weeklong vacation we'd been looking forward to for months. We spent the week eating, hanging out at the beach, eating, vineyard hopping, eating, cooking, playing scrabble, and eating. It was great!

Obviously my personal favorite parts of the trip centered around the table. It's impossible to choose my favorite thing that I ate or did all week but if I had to choose, my top three would be...

1. Wine Tasting! I don't even remember how many we visited. At least five? Six? We discovered that Long Island makes a pretty good Sauvignon Blanc and brought back a few bottles from Bedell, which we visited more than once...

2. Making Brownie Extravaganza for Jeff's family! What the heck is Brownie Extravaganza, you ask? It's basically a brownie trifle with cool whip and pudding and it's been my mom's go-to dessert for as long as I can remember. I had never made it for Jeff's family before and I loved being able to share one of my nostalgic family recipes with them.

3. Backyard lobster fest! My childhood was spent land-locked in Atlanta so seafood boils and get-your-hands-dirty lobster dinners weren't part of my typical summer growing up. Seeing as Jeff's family is from Rhode Island, they're kind of lobster pros. This was my favorite meal of the whole trip, despite the mosquitoes that attacked the table toward the end of dinner. There's just something so fun about cracking the shells and dunking a hunk of fresh lobster in butter. I'm drooling just thinking about it!

All in all it was an awesome trip. I got to make some new memories around the table with Jeff's family, I got to share one of my favorite family recipes with them, and I got to drink a lot of wine. If that doesn't sound like a successful summer then I don't know what does!

Have you made new family memories around the table this summer? Or eaten anything that blew you away?

P.S. I'm always channeling my food memories into new artwork. Click here to shop available prints!

P.P.S. I'd love to capture your most treasured food memories. Click here to learn about my commission packages!