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Behind My Brag Wall with Carla Lalli Music

by Framebridge Editorial
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July 18, 2024
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3 min read

Encapsulating the varied and intriguing physical items that tell the story of Carla Lalli Music’s success is something she never thought possible. From decades-old pasta tools to whole cookbooks, we showed Carla you can frame  just about anything—as long as it embodies your persona and story. 

Bright, spirited, and oh-so-delicious, Carla’s brag wall is an intriguing mix of paper and 3D mementos from her storied culinary career, peppered with photos of her warm, family-filled life intertwined with. It’s a wall that reveals the personal highlights of the chef, cookbook author, YouTube sensation, and James Beard Award winner, whose quick wit and candor are why we love watching her onscreen. Get inspired to frame what you never thought possible with Carla below.

From freeing her James Beard Award from its velvet box to brightening up a handwritten recipe (on a napkin) from Hollywood legend Mel Brooks, Carla’s brags are about displaying what’s been tucked away so she can celebrate them daily.
REFRAMING FRAMING

"One of the coolest things, for me, was rethinking those kinds of things you can put in a frame. And then placing those alongside photographs and more typical things you would frame. The other part I loved was choosing from so many colors and textures. I had somebody helping but also encouraging me to mix and match. No one was saying ‘that doesn’t go.’”

Much of Carla’s wall features “all the warm colors” she considers favorites, but with a twist: high-gloss for red, an electric orange, even a soft, unexpected purple. “Red and orange are really my power colors. I don’t know if that’s because I’m a fire sign,” she says.
PERFECT PARTNERS

“So I've always been intimidated by the idea of committing to something like art—like it has to be the perfect thing or has to be interior designed. Instead, being able to bring in three-dimensional objects, textiles, tools, whole entire books…that was really cool to me because I would not have done that on my own.”

Two of Carla’s biggest milestones are her cookbooks. Instead of book jackets, we chose to float mount each tome in its entirety against a black mat, a way to preserve every detail of these monumental efforts.
COMPLETE PICTURE

“A lot of the things on this wall represent moments in time when I was doing work I had never done before—so pieces for my first book and my second book, plus achievements from them. I didn’t necessarily know what all those stages of my life were going to add up to. I’m so glad that I can mark them and now tell a story through them.”

“I’ve been holding on to these things for a very, very long time. But they were just being saved. Now I’m looking at them, getting to enjoy them, and other people see them. It’s one of the most gratifying parts of this.”

About Carla


Carla Lalli Music is the New York Times bestselling author of That Sounds So Good and she received a James Beard Award for her cookbook, Where Cooking Begins. As the former food director at Bon Appétit, Carla hosted the hit YouTube show, “Back to Back Chef” and appeared in many other brand videos. She is the host of  Carla’s Cooking Show on her YouTube channel and she writes the Substack publication Food Processing. Carla lives in Brooklyn but you can also find her on Instagram and Tiktok. 

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