Instant Gratification: Polaroid-Style Frame Decals
Jul.22
I’m old enough to remember shaking blank Polaroid photos to try to speed up their developing, which was like watching a picture fade in reverse. Shaking them was as effective as tapping your feet to make a long line move faster.
And I’m delighted to discover that old-style Polaroid film has been brought back from the dead in the Digital Age by some photography enthusiasts in the Netherlands! Appropriately, they call themselves The Impossible Project.
The genre is super hot. Lady Gaga, recently signed on as Polaroid’s Creative Director, just posed for a giant Polaroid portrait. You’ll find it at the MIT Museum, which houses iconic photography memorabilia dating back to inventor Dr. Edwin Land.
And now, WallCandy Arts adds its stylish tribute. These removable wall decal Frames turn any wall into a nostalgic scrapbook. They look just as fashionable with 8 x 10 color enlargements taken 10 minutes ago as they do with vintage black and whites from your grandparents’ wedding album. If you are feeling extra creative, we recommend running your photos through editing software or free Web editing apps, such as Rollip.com, to give them a subdued Instamatic look.
Completing the scrapbook or bulletin board theme are pieces of yellowed Scotch tape and push-pins. The blank white area underneath the photos are meant for your witty captions with Dry-Erase markers — the same ones you use for your office whiteboard.
Some WallCandy Arts designs are clearly targeted toward specific ages and genders. For example, unless your hubby still wears Batman underwear, it is unlikely he’d be choosing these RACE ME race cars for his Man Cave.
The beauty of Frames is that they appeal to every demographic. Here are a few occasions and locations where decorating with them would be a huge hit:
WAYS TO USE WALLCANDY FRAMES
1. Dorm Room Decor: While your roommate sticks up the same cliched shots of James Dean, John Belushi’s Animal House college spoof, or (yuck) trendy guerrilla icon Che Guevara, you can show off the fun places you’ve traveled or hope to visit one day.
2. Birthday Parties: Doesn’t matter if the guest of honor is 1 or 100, frame the cutest moments of his or her life in wall decals.
3. Graduation Parties: These are going on all summer long! Kindergarten class photos will make your grad’s friends smile.
4. Wedding Anniversaries: We hardly open up our wedding albums any more, let alone share them with new friends. Make them the central focal point!
5. Bridal Showers: Decorate the house with action shots of the honored couple!
6. Bar and Bat Mitzvahs/First Communions: Any “This is Your Life” is an excuse to line the walls with a Time Machine tribute.
7. Adult Halloween Parties: Put blank frames up on the wall with categories for a costume contest: Funniest Costume, Sexiest Costume, Funniest Couple, Scariest Couple, etc. Take digital shots and print out 8 x 10s on your printer and have people vote for the winners. Give out WallCandy Arts decals as prizes
8. Going Away Parties: When a friend or family member moves, it’s another “This is Your Life” moment.
9. Childhood Bedrooms: Great place to showcase favorite family vacation pictures.
10. Office Decor: Show off the kids to your co-workers or your family vacation pics.
11. Playroom Decor: Kids are fickle. One day they love the Wiggles or Teletubbies. The next day they are “too old” for those characters and are Sesame Street sophisticates. Frames are ideal for displaying magazine pictures and children’s artwork, too.
As with all WallCandy Arts decals, there are no limits to where your imagination can take you.
We’d love to see how you’ve used WallCandy Frames. Please send us your photos and stories about your favorite decoration projects! Share them on Facebook or drop us a line here.
Exclusive Sneak Preview: Line Your Walls with Sunny (and Sticky) Optimism!
Jun.27
OK, so the zillion-gallons-a-day oil spill is bumming you out?
Or maybe you’re a little melancholy because most of your favorite TV shows are in reruns?
WallCandy Arts has the perfect thing to cheer you up: SUNSHINE!
Hey, I don’t know about you, but I when I was real estate shopping for my current house, “natural light” was one of my top criteria. There’s something about the sun — both the real version and the children’s art incarnations — that instantly makes us smile.
Check out the latest removable wall decal design called “My Sunshine!”
It’s called MY Sunshine because you or child takes ownership over where the vibrant rays will shine. The fuschia, red and yellow sun (wasn’t Superman born under a different color sun?) will instantly infuse optimism into your child’s bedroom.
The removable, reposable, remarkable sun — along with the blue cloud accessories — would make a splendid addition to any wall decal mural. I especially think “My Sunshine” is a perfect complement for WallCandy’s Season Tree (a gorgeous blooming tree teeming with birds and butterflies), the vibrant Blossoms collection, and Deerly Beloved, frolicking woodland creatures so cute you just want to pinch them!
Hey, without sunshine there can be no photosynthesis. I remember a first grade science experiment where we took one beansprout plant and put it on the windowsill and another beansprout and put it in a dark closet. Both seedlings were given equal amounts of water and love.
Not surprisingly, the closet-imprisoned beansprout grew up sad and lonely. The sunshine-infused plant had tons of self-esteem.
Brighten up your child’s room with “My Sunshine” and please share pictures of your murals with us — especially if you incorporate the sun with other designs. We LOVE to showcase our customers’ creativity in our Inspiration Album!
(Tune in here for news on the official “My Sunshine” release date or sign up for our free newsletter.)
Pixie Dust Countdown: The Top 9 Fairies of All-Time!
Jun.13
Let Entertainment Weekly worry about the “Top 100 Movie Characters” and let Rolling Stone worry about the “Top 100 Rock Album Covers.”
In honor of our new “Sweet Dreams Fairies,” we’ve researched America’s most fascinating fairies and are eager to present our latest rankings to you….
NUMBER 9: DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Most of us have fond memories of scoring a few bucks everytime our gums bled as a kid, but how many of us had our teeth knocked out by mean-spirited professional hockey players? In this 2010 destined-to-be-a-classic movie, wrestler-actor Dwayne Johnson plays an NHL star with an affinity for punching out smiles. He’s sadistically nicknamed the “Tooth Fairy” on the ice, but he goes too far when he tells his girlfriend’s daughter that there is no such thing as the tooth fairy. “Oh yeah?” says head Tooth Fairy Julie Andrews, “Now we’re going to punish you by forcing you to work on our staff!”
Yes, Julie Andrews has such power. Only in the movies.
NUMBER 8: GRAFFITI ARTIST SHEPARD FAIREY
It’s not so much that we admire the urban graffiti artist best known for defacing buildings with Andre the Giant stencils (another pro-wrestler fairy connection!) and later, creating those famous Warholian red-white-and-blue Obama prints that tout HOPE and CHANGE. Shepard earns his spot on the list for courageously forging on with his Fairey surname despite the years of playground and locker room torment he must have endured.
NUMBER 7: FAIRY PENGUINS
The smallest members of the penguin family, the 16-inch Fairies are usually found frolicking off the coast of Antarctica, Souther Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. They snack on anchovies, kril, plankton, crab larvae and sea horses. They don’t bother chewing anything and swallow their food whole. Their feathers often have a blue tinge, which makes them absolutely the cutest members of the penguin family, too.
NUMBER 6: PIXIE THE TATTOO ARTIST
She’s a tough cookie on TLC’s reality series, “L.A. Ink,” but she’s got a family-friendly side. Some of her body art includes cupcakes and the Care Bears!
NUMBER 5: PIXIE OF THE X-MEN
Brandishing translucent dragonfly wings, Pixie is able to distract her friends and enemies with her magic hallucination-inducing Pixie Dust. The dust seems to have different effects on different characters. Sometimes it causes people to see unicorns or teddy bears. Other times, brightly colored bubbles. Pixie is able to teleport herself and large groups to far-away destinations. Her magic skills are so widely respected that she’s even begun to give Doctor Strange formal training.
NUMBER 4 : CINDERELLA’S FAIRY GODMOTHER
Years before electric hybrid cars and Volkswagens refitted to run on discarded French fry oil, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella transformed an ordinary pumpkin into a royal chariot. Wish she would do something about the BP oil spill.
NUMBER 3: GLINDA, THE GOOD WITCH OF THE NORTH
Our sources tell us that not only was Dorothy’s savior in the Wizard of Oz a “good witch,” but she was also a good fairy. And it is gorgeous Glinda who is the first Oz character to stand up to injustice whenever and wherever she sees it.
NUMBER 2: TINKERBELL
Forget about Peter Pan. If you want true street cred with Boys Who Never Grow Up, you have to reinvent yourself as a video game!
NUMBER 1: SWEET DREAMS FAIRIES
Hey, you didn’t think we were going to rank the SDF girls any lower, did you?
What I love about the Sweet Dreams Fairies, besides their ability to drown out nightmares with “Confection Protection,” is the retro ice cream man feel to the graphics. It’s Candy Land. It’s Sammy Davis Jr.’s “Candy Man.”
At a time when cupcakes are BANNED at elementary school birthday parties, I admire fairies willing to take a stand and celebrate who they are. When you are in the fantasy world, lollipops and jelly beans are so much more fun and colorful than broccoli and asparagus.
Although the parent in me compels me to add that in the real world, your girls should eat their greens first and then dive into the cupcakes (in moderation).
It should be noted that Sweet Dreams Fairies, like all our stylish removable wall decals, contain absolutely no calories!
What’s Your Fairy Name?
Jun.6
Names are very important. Some parents fret over those “1001 Baby Names” books or even bring in consultants before committing to a boy’s or girl’s name in the delivery room.
Names shape personality. They define us on resumes and job applications based on people’s preconceptions of who they have met with the same name. And of course, some names sound sexier than others. Would you rather date a Benjamin or a Mortimer? Would you rather date an Amber or a Mildred?
In honor of WallCandy Arts’ recent immersion into Fairyland — check out our cute Sweet Dreams Fairies removable wall decals — we thought it would be fun for our customers to find out what their Fairy Names would be if they ever sprouted wings.
British artist Sue Edmunds, who designs customized fairy sculptures like the one above, created a Fairy Name Generator that will instantly convert your name into one respected by woodland creatures everywhere. Sue does not handle the logistics of legally changing over your birth certificates or driver’s license, but her delightful device will determine your strongest talents and give you fashion advice for pulling off the look.
To test out the Fairy Name Generator, I plugged in the name of WallCandy Arts CEO Allison Krongard, who created the Sweet Dreams Fairies.
Should Allison ever opt for the witness protection program, here is her Fairy identity:
Your fairy is called Gossamer WillowglowShe is a caster of weird dreams.She lives in spiderwebbed wonderlands and insect grottos.She is only seen in the light of a full moon.She wears tiny black spiders on her dresses. She has delicate green coloured wings like a cicada.
So go ahead and explore your inner Fairy. You know you want to!
(BTW, if fairies aren’t your thing, Sue Edmunds also offers a Vampire Name Generator for the Twilight crowd. We don’t have a line of vampire wall decals, because quite frankly, we’re in the business of crushing nightmares — not creating them!)
If WallCandy® Arts Removable Wall Decals Could Blush…
May.31
We’re absolutely flattered to be endorsed recently by two of the media’s most influential parenting venues, blush Magazine and MomFinds.com.
Blush Magazine just named WallCandy Arts CEO Allison Krongard one of its “Featured Mompreneurs,” and as a busy dad, I really appreciated how she tackled their question about the ongoing challenge of finding the right work-life balance:
Allison: “When I’m with the kids, I turn off my phone and computer. I try to give them quality mom time by being present. For example, I make it a point to talk to each of them privately every day. Instead of reading to them at night, I rub their feet before they nod off. It provides us with the same intimacy as reading in bed but they’ll talk in a relaxed state instead of just listening. It’s too hard to get any real scoop out of them after school before tennis or play dates. My pediatrician gave me the idea last year and it’s become a treasured ritual.”
“Also, since my husband has a flexible schedule, we often go out to breakfast together after dropping the kids off at school. This gives me the rest of the day to work but also the comfort of having made a connection with him.”
You can read the rest of Allison’s blush Magazine interview here!
And Momfinds.com, the popular parenting shopping guide, just named WallCandy Arts removable wall stickers their “Find of the Day.”
Momfinds expressed high regards for the latest offerings off the WallCandy press. They say that our Race Me car decals will “satisfy every little boy’s need for speed.” And they kindly recommend our Sweet Dreams Fairies as a “sweet deal.”
Check out the race cars, the candy fairies and dozens of other designs that will delight your children in our stylish Wall Sticker Gallery.
Sign up for our email newsletter and score an even sweeter 10 percent off your next order as well as upcoming scoops on subscriber-only coupons and sales!
Window Shop with WallCandy — Instantly share your faves with our new “LIKE” button
May.3
My friend has a little boy who loves hurricanes and tornadoes, volcanoes and shipwrecks. He is the fantasy demographic of The Weather Channel and National Geographic. Whenever I see a TV special I know this boy will love — or an educational toy — I email his father. This week he’s enthralled by the sinking of the Titanic and next week it might be Iceland’s sputtering volcano that’s powerful enough to stop airplanes.
Whatever the fascination, I keep my eye out for his favorite stuff. That’s what friends do for friends. And parents do for other parents.
So I am absolutely thrilled that WallCandy Arts has just added a Facebook “Like” button and a Twitter sharing button on all of its products. It’s just like if you are in a cool store, the kind that doesn’t just sell that mass-marketed stuff that every place has, and you see something you JUST KNOW your friends will like. You rummage through your wallet for the back of a business card to scrawl down the Website to look up later and then email to them.
Well, when you are window shopping from home and the computer screen is your window, one click will share everything you want to share. Your favorite removable chalkboard decals, your favorite erasable whiteboard decals and your favorite glow-in-the-dark decals!
These Facebook and Twitter buttons are even ideal if YOU want to drop hints to your friends and relatives about what might look fantastic in the baby’s room or your son and daughter’s room when they go through their next phase.
And speaking of phases, if your son happens to be into race cars right now, he’ll surely love these new Race-Me designs that bring the racetrack right into the bedroom. More details to come, but here’s a sneak peek!
Race-Me car decals hit the ground running on May 12!
The Universal Language of Fun: Wall Stickers & Wall Decals
Apr.21
It should come as no surprise that our removable wall decals and wall stickers are popular in many countries around the world. After all, most of our themes of wildlife, flowers, forest scenes, dinosaurs, automobiles and childhood fantasies are universally cherished.
We do a brisk business across the European continent and if you notice the wide variety of magazine genres above, our overseas press coverage reflects a diverse customer base and appeal across all ages. In this newsstand sampling, we have mags covering nature, parenting, celebrity gossip and women’s lifestyle/fashion.
WallCandy Arts is a natural magnet to parenting and childcare magazines, but it’s always a pleasant surprise to see where our instincts for interior decorating take us. For example, take a glance at the shopping spread below where our retired “SophistiKit” sticker collection shares the spotlight with new bikini fashions, kitchen appliances, designer furniture, luxury skin care products and chicken or veal recipes (I can’t tell what kind of meat that is, but it looks absolutely dee-lish!).
For some reason, the SophistiKit design never really caught on. Now, I’ve never been a teenage girl — or even come close to understanding their mindset, but I think these young sleek women walking their Paris Hilton-sized dogs look quite hip and fashionable. If you’d like them to make a comeback, please start a petition drive. We’d love to hear from you about this style or any other wall sticker design.
The thing that makes me the happiest about this magazine clip is seeing the words “Made in the USA” beam out of a paragraph in a foreign language. All too often, it is the other way around, and it is personally important to me to support a company which supports American workers.
As with the teenage girls, I do not profess to have any special insights into the psychology of Jessica Simpson. But from her facial expression above, it seems to me that she would much prefer to be holding some WallCandy stickers than yet another designer handbag.
We are flattered by the company in the above magazine layout, though. But the reality is that you don’t have to be wearing gold jewelry or talk on a Giorgio Armani smartphone to afford our reasonably priced collections of adorable glow-in-the-dark owls or whimsical chalkboard animal wall stickers.
And our pediatrician and opthalmologist approved “Smarts Bees & Trees” nursery decoration set improves vision and gives babies a head start regardless of which language they may be cooing gurgling in.
Are you loving this cross-cultural wall decal experience? Please visit the media coverage section of our European distributor, Da Da Kids, for an afternoon’s worth of fun reading material!
Chalkboard Decals: What Toddlers and Sophisticated Foodies Have in Common
Mar.24
WallCandy’s removable chalkboard decals were just endorsed by Bon Appetit magazine. But not for the dust-free taste of our special chalk!
The influential foodie publication just offered readers its Top 50 tips for “Easy Kitchen Updates” that make a dramatic impact. And our peelable, stickable chalkboards came in at #31, surrounded by trendy appliances and eco-friendly decor.
Here’s what the Bon Appetit editors wrote:
“CHALK IT UP: For playfulness and practicality in one, hang a chalkboard. These are intended for kids’ rooms, but our features editor put them in his kitchen and his family uses them everyday for menu ideas, shopping lists, doodles and reminders.”
Well, there you go… another testimonial about the versatility of our chalkboard decal collection, which features traditional rectangles in addition to shapes of a Big Apple, Safari Animals (elephants, giraffes and rhinos), Circles, Royal Palace Crests (Rococo), and a School Bus (Vroom!).
The Rococo style chalkboard was recently featured on NBC’s Today Show, with host Ann Curry giving it her personal blessing. “I’m groovin’ on that!” she said.
Sure, kids love these chalkboard decals, but they also make great conversation pieces and practical message boards in teacher’s lounges, offices and artists’ lofts. Please let us know where you love to hang ‘em!
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!
