Wall Stickers – Decorating the Nursery, Low Maintenance Style

I was eagerly awaiting the legendary nesting stage in the late stages of my pregnancy to see myself transformed into a fabulously feminine and motivated domestic goddess type person but instead of  a full butterfly like transformation I experienced a small fluttering of domesticity by way of an urge to buy stuff.  Which I am pretty sure was there before.  But this time it was, at least, an urge to buy stuff for the transformation of the office like spare room into something more like a babies room.  I say it was a nesting urge nonetheless.  Yay.  I am woman.
This urge to decorate the nursery resulted in trying out wall stickers.  My perception of wall stickers before my personal venture into this entirely new world was that they were the kind of not very cool thing people who also knit “there´s no place like home” wall hangings and embroider doiles might use to “brighten up a room” by, say, creating borders and floral features on walls with stencils.  Naturally the pervayers of these wall stickers would also be into lavender and purple in general.  However, I have discovered wall stickers (or decals) are part of a whole world of very cool designs and interior decorating.  For me it’s turned out to be one of those things that until you’d heard about them, well you hadn’t heard about them… and then when you start looking into it you wonder how you could have missed it.  There are a LOT of sites where you can buy wall stickers (or decals) and the amount of choice online means you can find far more interesting designs than cheesy kids cartoons – which are the wall stickers you tend to see more of in your average home decorating store collection – if you can find one at all.

One of my more exciting discoveries was the availibility of threadless t-shirt designs as stickers as a result of a partnership between whatisblik.com and the fabulous Threadless t-shirt company. Threadless is one of my favourite sites (along with etsy.com which I love, love, love).   These sites are a shining examples of the long tail phenomenan and they make possible access to a wide range of truly talented people and their unique products, bringing us greater choice, ability to find the stuff we like through recommendation tools,  and the ability of individuals to make an enterprise from their craft.  And I love that.

So back to wall stickers.  I was delighted to find one of my favourite designs from Threadless available as a wall sticker on whatisblik.com – I’m Like A Bird! by Lim Heng Swee.  (If you’re in Europe you need to place your order with www.supernice.co.uk – which also has a good range of other designers and designs).  So now, after an unprecedented stroke of gift buying genius, I have the design as a t-shirt for my husband, matching baby body with hoodie – so Dad and baby can step out in matching outfit -  and as a lovely pic on the nursery wall.
Another highlight is Wee Gallery (weegallery.co.uk), which I also found on Whatisblik and Supernice.  Wee Gallery take into account the developmental and visual capabilities of babies in their design, creating images that appeal to babies at different ages and actually aid their development, appealing to them in different ways at each stage.  You’re baby won’t be able to make out complete shapes in the beginning and will focus on patterns within the complete illustration.  But later they’ll see the complete picture.  There’s a complete explanation here.  SUCH a good idea.  How GOOD to find that there are people who are not only artistic but clever, clever, clever.  I love the idea that my baby will at some stage have a day where they shift their focus away from the pattern and start to see a complete shape from the thing that has been on their wall for their entire life to date. They’ll be like, “la la la …there’s that cool pattern again..look at the swirly bit..la ..la..laaaa..hang on..wh..is…is that?..goodness (or other less appropriate word baby has picked up from parents)! there’s like a whole THING there!..it’s like..it´s…OMG it’s a MONKEY!” Just imagine. How exciting would THAT be for the little human?