BY AVERY GOODSTINE for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 11/6/2026
Tucked away in the corner of a parking lot behind Cider and Cedar on Market Street lies a world of creativity and good old-fashioned crafting.
Poppy House Art Cafe, located at 744 Market St., Suite 102 A In Tacoma, is the city’s latest no-stress crafting hangout spot. Here’s how it works: bring yourself, a friend, or a group, and pay $25 per person for two hours of crafting with pre-supplied materials.
Owner Charisma Lawler has everything available from bedazzling, to collaging, watercolor, oil pastels, air-dry clay, friendship bracelet kits, and more. She will also be hosting various crafting classes including floral arranging and stained glass.
Poppy House truly is a passion project for Lawler. She does not have a professional background in art, nor did she know how to start a small business. But she felt something like Poppy House was missing from her own life, so she made it a reality.
Lawler has always considered herself a creative person and has fond memories of spending time at the YMCA as a kid and indulging in the crafts they offered. Her crafting hobby stuck with her into adulthood and ultimately became a respite as Lawler struggled with her mental health.
“I struggle with my mental health pretty bad, and I was in a not great place last year, and I had ordered a bedazzling kit from TikTok because I keep getting advertisements, and it sat in my house for a long time, and then eventually I started using it, and it really helped to regulate me a little bit, and it got me up and doing something,” she said.
After getting more into it, Lawler found herself wishing there was a place she could go to craft with other people. She didn’t even realize art cafes were a thing until she stumbled upon one in New York. After returning home, Lawler’s light bulb went off about a month later.
“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I could do this here,’” she said. “That’s genuinely the solution to what I’m thinking.”
What Lawler had been searching for was a low stress, low stakes environment where there’s no pressure to engage with other people, but friendly conversation is also welcome.
“I like being creative, and that’s kind of the idea of this place,” she said. “Serious artists can come if they want to, but it’s really for just the average person who kind of just wants a creative outlet, or wants to play around with art, is what I think of it. So it’s just low pressure.”
Prior to opening the art cafe, Lawler worked in customer service for Xfinity — a job she truly enjoyed and thought would be her forever career — until the stress of dealing with unhappy people started to affect her mental health.
She knew it was time for a change, and when Poppy House started to become a reality, she was able to quit Xfinity and put all of her time and money, literally, into this new project.
“When I look back at videos of the beginning of this, my face just looked like the life was kind of drained out of me, and that’s how I felt too,” she said. “And then, as time went on, and watching myself on these videos … I just felt color came back.”
Lawler said she really enjoys being in a positive space where everyone is happy all of the time. However, the business hasn’t come without its challenges, especially because Lawler went into this blindly.
She was inspired by social media videos harping on the fact that oftentimes, so many ideas never come to fruition because people want to wait until they can do it perfectly. She said she got a lot of online encouragement to jump in head first and be “delusionally confident” that everything will just work out.
It took Lawler about two months to find the space in Tacoma. She was looking for a place with a slightly industrial feel with exposed concrete and hard floors. And her suite is exactly what she was looking for. She painted one of the walls a deep pink color, got colorful rugs and light covers to make the space feel moody and cozy, and filled it with wooden tables and chairs.
She also serves prepackaged drinks and snacks, and is working on obtaining her liquor and food license so she can offer charcuterie, mimosas, beer, cider, and wine.
At the very beginning, Lawler said she put together a spreadsheet outlining how many customers she would need each day in order to be successful. She was expecting people to rush the doors the moment she posted her first online video. Now that Poppy House has been open for a little less than a month, she understands this most likely won’t be an overnight success story.
However, a recent video Lawler made garnered some attention, and now she’s working with multiple groups who want to rent out the space to host various events like a photography class, a glass blowing class, basket weaving, improv groups, pole dancing, a burlesque group, and others.
The first Sunday that Poppy House was open, Lawler said there were 43 people throughout the day, including a baby shower and a bachelorette party.
“Seeing all the people in there, I was like, oh my goodness, my dream was a reality,” she said. “It was so cool, and I just hope it picks up so that, you know, it can continue to be that way.”
At Poppy House, it costs $25 per person for two hours of unlimited crafting. Lawler said she plans to host crafting events like floral arranging and New Year vision board collaging.
