WallCandy® Arts Decoration Inspiration: Sticker Contrast is Important
Sep.14
One of the problems of being a design lover is that you find yourself critiquing everything around you: the paint choices in your local coffee shop, the authenticity of a mural scene or the font choice on a menu.
Recently, I visited the Philadelphia Art Museum and was stunned by the captions underneath a few statues in the sculpture garden. The imposing figure pictured above is General Friedrich von Steuben, the chief of staff for George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
I suspect you don’t come to the WallCandy Arts Blog for a history lesson, but please indulge me because this was an AMAZING man.
A military strategist from Prussia, Steuben first volunteered to serve in the Continental Army for free. He is credited for instilling discipline into the Minutemen and often conducted drills by yelling at his troops in German and French (hey, it worked!). He is also the visionary who decided that the Continental Army needed to separate the kitchen and latrines for sanitary reasons and suggested that leaving rotting animal carcasses in the camp might not be a bright idea either.
In the PBS Kids cartoon, “Liberty’s Kids,” General von Steuben was voiced by Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Most people who walk by the statue learn none of this information. Why? Because the text is virtually invisible — especially when the sun is in your eyes. Take a look at how difficult it is to read the engraving. Gold letters on a tan background is absolute blasphemy.
Heads should roll over this.
Now take a look at this wall sticker display I created for my daughter’s birthday party, using elements from the WallCandy “My Sunshine” set.
Notice how golden brown decals are not stuck on the golden brown wall. Note how the letters were chosen for maximum contrast. I assure you, no one walked by the dining room and was unaware that a birthday party was going on.
Unfortunately, there is currently no commercial demand for General von Steuben removable wall decals, but you can honor his memory by choosing colors that bounce well off each other!
(Full Disclosure: The fuschia and green Happy Birthday letters were handcut freestyle from paper plates. Try experimenting with different textures of paper and layering them on top of WallCandy decals with tape. You still don’t do any damage to the walls!)
Stickerating Flashback: Did You Collect Stickers as a Kid?
Mar.15
Rainbows, teddy bears, unicorns, hearts and roses made up the core of every girl's sticker collection
My brother and I collected baseball cards when we were kids and our little sister collected stickers. She probably wondered why we hoarded dozens of the same player — we were under the delusion that they would be paying for our college tuition — and we wondered how many rainbows and unicorns were too many. I mean, heck, don’t they all look the same after a while?
Recently, my sister-in-law Kari brought all those memories flushing back when she pulled out her childhood sticker collection from the 1980s. Kari took her collecting very seriously as you can see from this official document verifying her status as a “True Sticker Lover.”
This 1983 treasure trove was sealed for posterity in one of those horrific self-stick photo albums that congeals and yellows almost instantly. Apologies for not removing the plastic sheets to improve the clarity of these scans, but I was scared of permanently damaging her collection by peeling up the pages.
The irony, of course, is deep. Why would one ever want to stick the back of the sticker to a sticky surface when one could just use the sticker itself? I suppose that would leave you with the versatility to later use the sticker when and wherever you wanted it, but this collection clearly was for display purposes only.
As a sharp contrast, I would immediately stick stickers to lunchboxes, lockers, pencil cases, doors, walls, windows, my bike and virtually any hard surface begging for decoration. I had a particular preference for Wacky Packages stickers, which came in packs with bubble gum. “Wacky Packs,” as we called them, were spoofs of consumer products. The whole notion of using “CRUST” toothpaste was a hilarious concept in my youth.
I am sure my parents and my school would have loved for there to be WallCandy removable wall stickers back when I was a kid. It would have saved them immeasurable aggravation from the chore of removing stubborn adhesives from nearly everything I touched.
Stickerating your child’s bedroom is the ultimate nostalgia trip for anyone who collected stickers or Wacky Packages back in the day. The influential parenting site Cool Mom Picks hints that decorating with WallCandy might also even help your baby get into Harvard. The logic isn’t actually that far fetched! You can read about the research behind our Smarts wall decals by clicking here.
But back to the nostalgia factor. WallCandy’s CEO Allison Krongard was addicted to stickers as a girl (surprised?) and calls her collection her “greatest treasure.”
It has yet to be rediscovered, though. Allison suspects her mother may have thrown her albums out — but holds no grudge.
“First and second grade were hot for sticker trading and going to the store to buy more was the best treat,” she says. “I remember bringing my sticker book to my friend Emily’s house for play dates. She had the best stickers because she had a cool older sister, Sarah, who bought stickers with her babysitting money.”
Allison remembers being a huge fan of puffy stickers with googly eyes and was also enamored with Hello Kitty.
Hey, who isn’t?
For now, Allison and other grown-ups yet to be reunited with their childhood sticker collections will have to vicariously live through Kari’s.
You can never get enough cute teddies:
And no doubt, every little girl fantasized about President Ronald Reagan, in both his Oval Office and Cowboy incarnations:
How about an overdose of syrupy sweetness: Unicorns, Rainbows, Balloons, Teddies, Pandas, Hearts & Kittens all rolled into one? — YOU BETCHA!
This last glimpse of Kari’s collection illustrates three historical facts about the 1980s:
1. Children’s author Sandra Boynton (I love “Pajama Time!” and “Moo, Baa, La La La!”) apparently had a chocolate fixation with her hippos.
2. The hostile backlash against Izod alligator golf shirts apparently had lasting power.
3. Pre-rollerblade roller skates weren’t just a 1970s thing.
How about you? Did you every collect stickers as a kid? Do you know where your album is now? Did you also have a childhood crush on Ronald Reagan? Please share your sticker memories with us in the comments below!
