Our next gift guide travels to Salt Lake City and Provo, where shoppers can score upcycled clothing, wood-burned prints, and gender-affirming underwear.
Find the perfect gifts for your friends, family, and that pesky requisite Secret Santa while supporting Salt Lake City’s local trendsetters, crafters, and artists.
Alethia Lunares’s So Kitschy, So Crafty Jewelry
While nationally renowned artist Alethia Lunares is primarily admired for her illustration and animation work (with the likes of Disney, HBO, Tumblr, and more), she reveals a more kitschy, crafty, and playful side through her handcrafted jewelry. Whether you are drawn to her clay pins or beaded chokers, you can snag the right gift for the bold jewelry lover in your life. You can purchase her items through her website or at the Beehive Bazaar on 33 400 South in Provo, Utah.
Gender-Affirming and Inclusive Skivvies from Aqua Underwear
Aqua Underwear focuses on creating handmade garments for better gender, size, disability, and BIPOC inclusion. Owned by queer and BIPOC sewist Mel Martinez, Aqua Underwear offers gender-affirming and inclusive underwear options such as packing boxer briefs, compression briefs, and pad-compatible boxer briefs. You can find Aqua Underwear at Under the Umbrella bookstore on 511 West 200 South in Salt Lake City or order from the Aqua Underwear website.
Wood-Burned Pieces by Mermacita
Ink-and-pencil artist Miriam Gutierrez, known as Mermacita, has had a successful run this year creating large-scale murals all over Salt Lake City and beyond. While her murals have received a lot of well-deserved attention, we must shed light on her other projects such as her wood-burned pieces, stickers, and prints. Her love for nature and organic material especially shines through on her wood burnings, with wild foliage carefully burned onto slices of wood. You can purchase Mermacita’s work for the nature lover in your life on her website.
Memorialize Loved Ones through The Ammo Mama
Keepsake jewelry has leveled up through Carly Boulton’s work as The Ammo Mama. Boulton’s work helps memorialize loved ones and showcase special life events by converting hair, pet fur, photos, flowers, and more into wearable art. Outside of her custom work, Boulton also offers earrings and studs made out of recycled bullets. You can find her work on her website or at Gallenson’s at 166 East 200 South in Salt Lake City.
Upcycled Hand-Painted and Printed Threads by Ammy Foste Clothing
Ammy Foste is mystical and carries an outer-dimensional demeanor by nature. Recently, us earthlings have had a chance to take a peek into her world through her hand-painted, dyed, and printed clothing items that showcase her psychedelic painting style. Foste—using upcycled jackets, jeans, sweaters, and even intimates as a canvas—offers one-of-a-kind and visually stimulating gift options for art and fashion aficionados. You can find her clothing at Animalia on 280 East 900 South in Salt Lake City or on her website.
Cozy Candles by Liv Greene Candles
There is nothing like having an aesthetically pleasing candle in your home to soften the edges of enduring the frigid winter. Why not gift that comfort to a loved one this holiday season? Liv Greene Candles carries an eclectic variety of candles—including offerings shaped as lemons, tiny cottages, flowers, and even dice—for any type of personality. All of Liv’s candles are made with biodegradable ingredients and clean-certified scents and essential oils. You can find her products at Animalia on 280 East 900 South in Salt Lake City or on her website.
H Works Jewelry’s “Silver Fever” Jewelry
Werewolves beware. Salt Lake City-based H Works Jewelry has everyone catching “silver fever” with her minimalist, sleek, unadorned, and linear silver jewelry. What makes H Works Jewelry a great gift for the holidays is the jewelry’s versatility. The retailer’s simplistic but unique approach makes their jewelry approachable for all ages, styles, genders, and personalities. Learn more and purchase H Works Jewelry on the website.
