Window Painting for Cafe Padda

I’d just moved to Sweden and was looking to build connection with local businesses and showcase my paintings on a larger scale through window painting.

Cafe Padda was a lovely cafe who had gorgeous wrap around windows which were perfect for a large scale window painting. I met with the owners and soon fell in love with their origin story and business model. They’d moved from Germany to Sweden and to turn a long story short ended up opening their own small business in a local suburb that was in need of community building opportunities. Their cafe not only serves the classic Swedish ‘fika’ (cake and coffee) but also run community building events such as a trivia night, Saturday morning flea market and more.

I wanted to find a way to capture the key elements of their business; fika, community and whimsy. Where does whimsy come in? Well, ‘Padda’ is the Swedish word for toad and the Cafe Padda logo is a toad sitting in a cup of coffee. If that isn’t whimsical then I don’t know what is.

We wanted to make sure that the window painting looked as good on the inside as it did on the outside, so we decided to do a simple white line style painting so that customers could still see through the glass easily. I did a collection of initial sketches to showcase the baked goods, activities and cheeky little toads that I was planning on painting. Then after I got the tick of approval I started the very next day!

I had an absolute blast painting little toads on bicycles and trying to capture the knot of the classic Swedish kanel bulla (cinnamon bun). After 2 days of painting I filled 20 windows with a series of whimsical sketches. It was so lovely seeing the community check out the window and see their excitement for the artwork as well.

It was an absolute joy to create and I’m excited to work on more large scale work like this one.