Extreme Decorating: Creatively Using Your Child’s Lunch as a Canvas
May.3
(Note: “Extreme Decorating” is an ongoing series in which WallCandy Dad goes beyond removable wall decals and explores unusual and over-the-top decorating ideas tried in homes, restaurants, hotels, businesses, tourist destinations and public spaces. We all get decoration inspiration from different places, as it is a reflection of our tastes and personalities).
Graphic Designer David LaFerriere has captured the imagination of parents everywhere with his famous Sharpie sketches on sandwich baggies. (Source: Flickr)
Putting loving and inspirational messages in your kids’ school lunch is a tradition probably as old as lunch itself. But most of the time we hear about it, it’s usually the creativity of moms. So it’s refreshing to see a doting decorating dad get a little bit of attention.
The talented dad responsible for the sandwich art above is graphic artist David Laferriere, who has shared his daily lunch sketches — made with Sharpies on plastic bags — on the popular photo site, Flickr.
David has been amusing his sons Evan, 15, and Kenny, 14, for the past five years with daily cartoons of monsters, animals, dinosaurs, aliens and funny faces. “I’ve been doing it for my kids since they were little,” he told the Flickr Blog. “They love it and nothing makes me happier than hearing their reaction at the end of the day.”
Personally, nothing makes me happier about this story than knowing that these teenage boys aren’t too cool to appreciate their dad’s enthusiasm, artistry and dedication!
David, who lives with his family in the Boston area, originally tried putting artwork directly on the bread with food coloring but the process was laborious and bread didn’t serve well as a smooth canvas. The Sharpies on plastic technique gave him more versatility and the option of saving his best work without it getting moldy.
Lunch Art Retrospective -- You can see hundreds of artist David LaFerriere's sandwich bag drawings on his Flickr photo gallery. Double click the image above to see more pics.
The Sharpie company a while back wrote a tribute to David’s talents, which he fine-tuned at the Rhode Island School of Design.
More than a million people have seen his baggie art so far. You can watch a video interview with the artist here.
As a creative dad myself — I design my children’s birthday invitations, but have yet to put my stamp on lunch — it’s wonderful to see other fathers’ work. Besides David’s Flickr feed, check out the blogs Lunch Bag Art and Lunch Bag Artist if you have a moment.
There are lots of lucky kids out there!
(Have you stumbled across a fabulous case of “Extreme Decorating” lately? Where were you last overwhelmed by the decor? Drop us a line at hello@wallcandyarts.com).
Extreme Decorating: A Penny For Your Thoughts
Apr.11
(Note: “Extreme Decorating” is an ongoing series in which WallCandy Dad goes beyond removable wall decals and explores unusual and over-the-top decorating ideas tried in homes, restaurants, hotels, businesses, tourist destinations and public spaces. We all get decoration inspiration from different places, as it is a reflection of our tastes and personalities).
Trendy Decor: The Penny Floor? (Source: ABC News)
The penny is an endangered species. For a while now, it has cost more than a penny to manufacture a penny — and that’s not a smart investment for us taxpayers. The debate now comes down to sentimentality vs. practicality. It’s only a matter of time until the one cent coin bids farewell from circulation.
When that day comes, what will be the fate of the zillions of pennies now collecting in coffee cans and jars on our kitchen counters?
Here’s betting that they could become the trendiest option for tiling floors and decorating walls.
How do cold pennies feel on bare feet? Ask Ryan and Emily, a couple who cemented 59,670 pennies in their bedroom and awake each morning in a coppery glow.
Penny for Your Thoughts in the Bedroom? (Source: ThePennyFloor.com)
At the home improvement website, Remodelaholic, another couple transformed a small accent wall with just $50 and discovered that Elmer’s Glue works just as well as a hot glue gun.
Penny Accent Wall (Source: Remodelaholic.com)
The practice can be habit forming. A few years back, The New York Times visited Mike and Annie’s Penny Bar in McKittrick, California. They used Elmer’s, too — who wants to risk sticking your digits together with Superglue? Mike and Annie took six years to affix more than a million Lincolns — like a “swarm of copper ants,” as the Times put it — to every available blank surface in the restaurant.
Admirably, the small establishment had transformed itself into a popular tourist attraction.
Penny Pool Table at Mike and Annie's Penny Bar. (Source: The New York Times)
And in Garfield, Pennsylvania, tattoo artist Mel Angst recently took 250,000 pennies to tile his Artisan tattoo studio.
“Amazingly enough, it’s a lot cheaper to glue money to your floor than to actually buy tile. It’s about $3 a square foot,” he told ABC News.
So watch that loose change jingling around in your pocket. You might soon be on the wrong end of a hot glue gun!
The downside of Penny Mania is that once you make a commitment, it’s tough to go back.
The beauty, of course, of all WallCandy removable wall decals, chalkboard wall stickers and peel-and-stick wallpaper is that no decoration decision is irreversible. WallCandy decorations don’t even leave a mark on the wall.
But maybe there is a reckless appeal and adrenaline rush to ripping out drywall and turning your home inside out in the event of a mistake. What items would you want to glue to your walls if given the opportunity?
(Have you stumbled across a fabulous case of “Extreme Decorating” lately? Where were you last overwhelmed by the decor? Drop us a line at hello@wallcandyarts.com).
Snow Kidding: Wall Decals are one of the few toys with universal gender appeal
Nov.26
WallCandy's Snowman (Double click the scarf for more details).
If you’re not a subscriber to Swedish toy catalogues, you may have missed the news that one of the biggest toy store chains in Scandinavia recently pulled a 100-percent gender role switch in its annual Christmas book. In the Swedish ads, boys are shown playing with dollhouses and Hello Kitty, while are girls are photographed with Nerf guns. The country has undergone a massive national campaign to make the schools gender neutral, including the introduction of a gender-neutral “hen” pronoun.
Elise Claeson, a former equality advocate at the Swedish Confederation of Professions, recently told the Christian Science Monitor that the blurring of gender identities has gone off the deep end.
“It is important to have your gender confirmed to you as a child. This does not limit children; it makes them confident about their identity,” she said.
At WallCandy Arts, we couldn’t agree more. We’re pro-princess here. And while we’re totally OK with boys who like princesses, we don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that girly stuff mostly appeals to girls. As we noted earlier in this blog, there is significant research indicating that girls naturally like pink and that they are not forced to have this preference by societal norms.
All of this is our elaborate way of saying that we’re delighted to offer both Design Your Own Snowman and Design Your Own Snow Woman removable wall decal kits for the holidays, two of our offerings in the spirited Occasions line.
WallCandy's Snow Woman (Double click her mittens for more information).
Candidly, we can’t tell the difference between a male snowman and a female snowman — even when they are disrobed.
But your kids will have fun mixing and matching different clothing combinations regardless of the color.
Best part of all, removable vinyl snow won’t give you frostbite!
(Design Your Own Snowpeople are 25 percent off on Cyber Monday, November 26. Just use code “weekend25″)
Extreme Halloween Decorating vs. Casual Celebratory Stickerating
Oct.9
France's Ghost House.
Halloween is not a holiday of moderation.
It’s a time when we encourage our kids to gorge themselves on too much candy and when we stuff our yards with fake gravestones, jack-o-lantern shrines and inflatable Frankensteins. That is unless you live in one of those condo complexes that regulate the colors of your mailbox.
In the small French village of Delme, the Berdaguer & Pejus architecture firm recently transformed a former funeral home into a “Gue(ho)st House” by coating it with a thick layer of polystyrene that drips onto the landscape. Pretty creepy, huh?
The name is inspired by a little word play: A Guest + A Host = A Ghost.
Almost every residential neighborhood has at least one house that stands out. The Orlando Sentinel recently tracked down a Central Florida homeowner who built “a torture chamber with birds pecking at exposed intestines, an evil doctor’s lab and, inside, a full-size queen Alien from the 1979 sci-fi thriller movie.”
CNN found a bunch of extreme decorators, including the Wizard of Oz-obsessed Mott family in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. The Motts spend months on their displays and add music for a special overall effect.
Channeling Dorothy & Friends
If you have the time, energy and money to turn your home into a Halloween theme park, all the power to you. I thoroughly enjoy these displays every October.
But there’s also a more low key (but no less festive) way to decorate on Halloween.
WallCandy removable wall decals let you express your holiday spirit, but won’t take weeks to clean up after the last stale Butterfinger leaves your plastic pumpkin.
Our newest offering is the Boo Halloween Wall Decals set, which lets the kiddies have fun playing dress-up with witches, ghosts and bats. It’s an all black-and-orange fashion show!
Boo!
WallCandy has also developed an innovative way to “carve” pumpkins without getting seeds and pumpkin guts all over your carpet. Our classic Design Your Own Jack-O-Lantern kit gives you three removable vinyl pumpkins, with 35 mouth and eye parts for varied facial expressions.
And if spooky themes are your son’s or daughter’s year-round passion, we can also temporarily transform their room into Monster Mash Central with our French Bull Monster Magenta removable wallpaper. And you thought that monsters were only a boy thing? Guess again.
Another major advantage of going the removable wall decal route this Halloween: Your neighbors won’t be rolling their eyes at you if you decide to keep your decorations up through February.
And if your kids like to play dress up, they won’t want Halloween — or their fun wall sticker reminders — to ever go away.
(What’s the most extreme display of Halloween decorations you’ve seen recently? Drop us a line at hello@wallcandyarts.com)
Let your kids channel their inner monsters with removable wallpaper
Sep.6
French Bull Monster Magenta Removable Wallpaper (Click image for more info)
So you think it’s too early for Halloween decorations? Tell that to your local retailers, some of whom started to peddle sacks of Candy Corn late this summer.
But my experience suggests that Monsters are a 365-days-a-year thing.
When I was a kid, I had a glow-in-the-dark Monster Convention poster tacked to the back of my door. It was a gathering of Dracula, Frankenstein, a witch, a skeleton and a mummy (the latter three of which were generic fill-ins compared to the celeb monsters). Their eyeballs, fangs and fingernails all glowed, as did the words “SWEET DREAMS!”
These monsters were meant to be scary and represented almost a rite-of-passage for me. If I was deliberately going to sleep under the gaze of these vile beasts than nothing could ever scare me.
WallCandy’s full roster of removable peel-and-stick wallpaper monsters are far more cute and cuddly, making them ideal for the preschool age. Check out a close-up of the gremlin-like creatures below. They are also far more fashionable than the beasts of yore as you can see from the official WallCandy Monster Palette. Did Dracula ever dare wear fuchsia or lavender?
Which monster complexion do you prefer: Magenta or Gray?
Monsters typically get a bad rap for “causing” nightmares at bedtime, but there is convincing research that pretending to overcome these fictitious cretins is a healthy part of childhood development. Researcher Gerard Jones, author of “Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes and Make Believe Violence,” suggests this kind of imaginative play gives kids a sense of control.
In full disclosure, there is occasionally a news report of an adult monster fan going off the deep end — as in this tragic demise of a Bigfoot impersonator getting crushed on a highway — but most monster play is fun spirited.
Responding to “Killing Monsters,” PopMatters blogger Jon Nettles shared this observation of his own son’s play:
“Despite the fact that he spends a good portion of his day causing imaginary mayhem as the Red Ranger, Spider-Man, or a particularly bloodthirsty velociraptor, he’s also perhaps the most empathic child I’ve ever met, distressed when he sees a felled tree and passionate in his defense of any insect that makes its way into the house,” Nettles writes.
French Bull Monster Mashup Removable Wallpaper (Click image for more info)
Yes, there’s little fear that encouraging your kids to embrace their inner monsters will turn them into real ones.
I can’t wait for Halloween!
(Do you receive our newsletter? New WallCandy customers receive a 10 percent discount code just for signing up. Scroll down to the bottom right corner of this page for more details.)
Big City wall stickers capture the excitement of skyscrapers — without straining your neck!
May.15
French Bull Big City Wall Stickers
Whenever I take my kids into the city, it’s like King Kong is clinging to the top of the Empire State Building.
About 50 percent of our time is spent staring at the top of skyscrapers, or even modest high-rise apartments. It’s a miracle that we don’t get trampled by sidewalk pedestrian traffic!
People may assume that WallCandy’s French Bull City Wall Stickers represent Manhattan. Based on the low car-to-cab (not to be confused with low-carb) ratio, I can definitely tell you that the boy in the picture is NOT playing with New York. Midtown traffic is just a sea of taxi yellow.
French Bull City is Any City, any place your child deems it to be. It very well could be downtown Hartford, Nashville, Sacramento, or even the City of Fairies if you crossover with our Sweet Dreams Fairies decals.
The thing I appreciate most about the French Bull architects is their creative building designs. Why should urban planners settle on cookie-cutter buildings?
In the spirit of avoiding boring plain rectangles, we found some fascinating skyscraper architecture around the world. For starters, check out this bottle-opener-shaped tower in Saudi Arabia. It almost could double as a giant slingshot.
Kingdom Centre -- Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Source: WebUrbanist.com)
Also known as the Burj Al-Mamiaka, the Kingdom Centre tower has the negative space to abide by local laws forbidding occupied floors beyond a certain height.
The Gherkin in London. (Source: WebUrbanist.com)
Costing more than $1 billion, the Gherkin is Britain’s most expensive office building. Looks like a bullet or missile wrapped in pretty wrapping paper.
The Lippo Centre in Hong Kong (Source: WebUrbanist.com)
This skyscraper is my favorite. It looks like one of those toy brain-teaser puzzles you twist for hours with no progress.
Locals nicknamed these towers the “koala trees” because it looks like the “C” shapes are clinging to a trunk.
So what’s the funkiest-looking building you’ve ever seen?
Welcome to the Jungle — Animal Wall Decals You’ll Go Wild Over
Mar.16
Jungle Love: French Bull and WallCandy Arts team up to create the Friendliest African Safari your baby can enjoy from her or his crib.
What amazes me about language development and early education is just how often the passengers of Noah’s Ark make an impact on our kids.
Think about it. If you’re learning to speak a new language, how often would you use the words “Giraffe,” “Lion,” “Hippo,” or “Elephant” in normal everyday conversations? I suppose that you would if you grew up in a zookeeper’s family or in a hut near the Serengeti Plain. But jungle animals totally dominate children’s literature and decor.
The end result of that? A population primed for becoming biologists, environmental conservationists or at bare minimum, the future audience for Animal Planet, National Geographic and The Discovery Channel.
One of the things that amuses me most as a parent is being continually surprised by how many astounding details my elementary school and preschool-age children know about the animal kingdom. To celebrate the recent release of WallCandy Arts and French Bull’s latest Jungle Wall Decals, our research team has come up with some amazing animal facts (via National Geographic’s Mammal files) so you’ll be prepared the next time your youngster starts a conversation.
French Bull Elephant Wall Sticker
THE ASIAN ELEPHANT
- Elephant ears radiate heat to keep them cool.
- An elephant’s trunk has more than 100,000 different muscles!
- Elephant tusks aren’t merely decorative. They’re used to scrape bark off trees, dig for food and water and occasionally for combat.
French Bull Lion Wall Sticker
THE AFRICAN LION
- Male lions are super territorial, prowling over 100 square miles with their families.
- Female lions do most of the hunting with cubs not joining the fun until they are at least one year old.
- Lions are the only wildcats who live in groups.
French Bull Giraffe Wall Sticker
THE GIRAFFE
- The adult giraffe’s legs alone (6 feet) are usually taller than most humans.
- Male giraffes like to sometimes joust by butting their long necks and heads. Female giraffes wisely avoid this activity and experience less headaches.
- Giraffe mothers give birth standing up!
- Grabbing a drink is often a risky activity, as bending down makes giraffes vulnerable to attacks from predators. Luckily, giraffes only need to drink once every few days. They get plenty of moisture from chewing plants.
So who knows, maybe there’s a future Jane Goodall cooing in your crib right now! If you’re a huge nature buff, don’t forget to also check out WallCandy’s Chalkboard Jungle, Elephant Chalkboard, Forest Friends, Deerly Beloved, and French Bull Jungle Party removable temporary wallpaper.
rising to the occasion: hot air balloon wall stickers encourage young adventurers
Mar.9
Here’s the ultimate WallCandy theme for a nursery, playroom or bedroom if you don’t want to go too girly (Princess Wall Decals) or too boyey (Rush Hour Cars).
I love that word “boyey!”
Our Hot Air Balloon Wall Decals will channel your child’s imagination, sense of adventure, and hey, there’s no prettier way to travel — is there?
I personally LOVE the Plano (Texas) Balloon Festival for all the whimsical balloons it attracts to the mix — almost like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade cartoon floats. Check out the upsidedown Humpty Dumpty!
Pilots in the Plano Festival drop beanbags and try to hit a target to win prizes. Just before sunrise and just after sunset, all the balloonists also participate in a breathtaking “Glow.” When the balloons fire themselves up, the flames illuminate the canopy like lightbulbs.
Hot air balloons actually date back to 1783 when the first craft delighted crowds stretching their necks up at the skies over Paris. The balloon itself was made of paper and cotton — a serious fire hazard — but the pilots made it to the ground safely after an amazing 30 minutes in the clouds.
Children’s literature and entertainment is filled with hot air balloon imagery. I can recite the narrative of “Curious George and the Hot Air Balloon” by Margret and H.A. Rey — and the scenes of George hovering over the maintenance workers grooming the faces on Mount Rushmore still make me smile. I don’t want to ruin the suspense of the story for you by giving away too many details. But it’s highly recommended.
I also think that Disney and Pixar’s “UP” has done more to promote the thrill of hot air ballooning than a zillion festivals — although some of the tear-jerker themes (overcoming loneliness, infertility, aging) certainly resonate with adults on a deeper level. Last year, as a promotional stunt for its new program, “How Hard Can It Be?”, the National Geographic Channel made a 16 x 16 x 18-foot model house go airborne with the help of 300 large helium balloons (8 feet in diameter).
The house reached a peak of 10,000 feet and stayed in the clouds for about an hour!
With WallCandy’s hot air balloon removable wall decals, who knows where your kid’s imagination will lead?
Gingerbread houses that sweeten the holiday spirit
Dec.16
Remember when the expectations for making a gingerbread house was the 3D equivalent of a children’s stick-figure drawing with simple crosses on the windows?
Those days are long gone. The above architectural cookie masterpiece is a replica of the Winchester Mystery House, a 160-room Victorian mansion with twisting halls and secret passageways built by Sarah Winchester, the heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune. The allegedly haunted house is now a huge tourist attraction in San Jose, California, drawing especially large crowds around Halloween. No word if this gingerbread version of the Winchester abode is occupied by ghosts as well.
The Winchester cookie mansion is one of a slew of over-the-top gingerbread designs featured on WebUrbanist, a hip architecture site.
With the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary right around the corner, I’m partial to this fabulous White House design:
This one just looks too gorgeous to give to Sasha and Malia Obama to snack on — not that their health conscious mom would let them munch too far!
Walt Disney World, which once coaxed me into buying a gigantic $8 candy apple that I felt pressure to finish, has mastered the art of cookie construction.
Disney is famous for creating life-size gingerbread houses which their costume characters can “live” in and greet amusement park guests. Check out the sugar-coated fun that Stitch from “Lilo & Stitch” fame is having this year.
But as impressive as the world of Larger Than Life 3D Cookies may be, there is still an amazing appeal to decorating gingerbread houses with absolutely no mess (or chances of ants or mice occupying the home).
WallCandy’s Design Your Own Gingerbread House is a way for kids to repeatedly enjoy the nuances of ice cream cone and lollipop construction without fear of long-term dental implications or a lecture about the childhood obesity epidemic.
The removable wall decal set comes with gingerbread walls and roof, candy cane lamp posts, ice cream cone chimney, snow ball pastries, snow icing, snow mounds, jelly rolls and various hard candies, gum balls and jelly beans.
It’s a way to extend the holiday fun all winter long, whether you live in a snowy climate or not.
Happy decorating!
Pumpkin Carving Without Blood or Guts: Halloween Jack-O-Lantern Wall Stickers
Oct.17
SIMPLE SMILE -- Harkening back to the era when pumpkin carving didn't require lasers! (Click the picture to discover the mess-free pumpkin alternative).
When I was a kid, there were no “Pumpkin Carving Kits,” just Dad, a steak knife and a black Magic Marker.
We were thrilled with cutting out triangles and circles and almost always gave our Jack-O-Lanterns poor dental habits — letting them have three teeth at the very most!
These days, the artistic stakes and expectations are much higher — as carvers are using specialized tools and stencils to bring these gourds to life.
Check out the Barack Obama and Simon Cowell designs created by British pumpkin farmer David Finkle, who was featured in the UK Daily Mail:
From the White House to The X Factor -- Who gets more people to vote, Barack Obama or Simon Cowell? (Source: Cavendish Press)
The subtleties of shading are achieved when the artist scrapes off the dark orange pumpkin skin and gets into the light orange meat instead of the traditional method of slicing and dicing through to the core.
If you want to get really fancy with the pop culture references, the celebrity gossip site TMZ offers free stencil downloads allowing you to decorate your doorstep with characters such as Madonna, Steve Jobs, Charlie Sheen, Chaz Bono, Betty White, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.
Cute, but I’m still a Halloween purist and prefer traditional geometry when I make my cuts with my children.
Large peel-and-stick removable Halloween wall decals with interchangeable faces! (Click the pic for more details).
Which is why I am delighted to share WallCandy’s new Halloween Wall Stickers that represent pumpkins of every body type!
This removable wall decal kit taps into every child’s core desire to make funny faces — and it comes without the need of knifes, metal scoops or scrapers.
With these removable, restickable, repositionable pumpkin face stickers, there’s no such thing as a mistake. You can turn your Halloween friends from happy to puzzled to surprised in an instant. Try doing that with the 25-pounder on your doorstep. No candles to burn your little ones’ hands or batteries draining energy.
We’re not suggesting that Halloween Wall Decals totally replace traditional pumpkins. I still have fond memories of squishing out the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin guts and goo and shooting them (squeeze slippery ones between your thumb and forefinger) at my younger brother. But these removable wall decorations won’t wilt or rot a few days after your sugar high comes down.
What are your favorite pumpkin creations of all time? Please show us your Jack-O-Lanterns and Halloween costumes on the WallCandy Facebook page!
