Saint Paul’s Mama’s Happy shop changed locations in January, giving their “mamas” more room to show off what they can do. The boutique home store has been compared to a living Pinterest board, and for good reason. It’s a shop filled with furniture and décor that’s been handmade, refurbished or repainted; you’ll find gifts and unique items for your home not found at the megamall.
The woman behind the store, Amanda Ficek, started the first Mama’s Happy in Mound in 2012, later moving to Independence in the old Historic Lyndale Creamery after realizing that the area didn’t have the retail choices she hoped for. But rather than open a regular store, she established Mama’s Happy as an “occasional” shop, open just once a month. The store grew, allowing her to open full-time shops in St. Louis Park, Saint Paul and Stillwater. One of the most popular items with Ficek’s customers is Chalk Paint, developed by internationally known British paint expert Annie Sloan.
“We were just [painting] like everybody else,” Ficek says. Spray painting, painting with latex, “any cheap thing,” she says. “But with that, you really have to sand down the piece to get it to adhere, and many times you’d finish and think, this doesn’t look how I wanted it to.” That’s when friends and customers started telling her about Chalk Paint, which was just finding a market in the United States after being popular in Europe for many years. While it’s expensive, the perk is that there is no sanding, no priming and no prep. And, Ficek says, it works like a charm.
Along with the paint comes the opportunity to participate in workshops. “It’s part of the deal,” Ficek says. Each store offers the Chalk Paint 101 workshop at least once a month, and a cabinet painting class about once a month. “We have more and more people painting their kitchen cabinets,” she says. “It’s all that 1980s honey oak.”
“The nice thing about the classes,” Ficek continues, “is I always tell people you don’t need to take the class to use the paint. It’s just that many times the class will show you all the different things you can do with the paint.” You can water it down, blend colors and practice before painting your own item at home.
The store also offers painting classes (about $55), “kind of like the wine and canvas night type of thing,” Ficek says. But unlike some wine-and-painting classes, Mama’s Happy artists will really help teach you the tricks behind painting and blending colors.
As for fall trends, Ficek says she’s not sure exactly what’s in store, but that’s the great thing about how Mama’s Happy works. Larger stores have to plan ahead for the next season, “whereas we can just react immediately,” she says. “So if all of a sudden [certain] colors are what is hot, we just paint it up, and tomorrow it will be in the store.”
“That’s what I love about this business,” Ficek says. “We can just shift with the trends.” If you can’t find the piece you’re looking for, she says, “Come back in two weeks, and it’ll probably be there.”
