Your baby boy outgrew the oh-so-chic turquoise and chocolate animal theme in his nursery almost as quickly as he stretched out of his onesies and his first pair of Stride Rites.
So, with a few more gallons of paint — mixed in equal parts with nostalgia — you put his passion for cars on display. Blink, though, and he’ll grow into another theme.
It’s a challenge for busy parents to keep up. For wall décor that goes up as fast as kids grow up, think wall stickers.
The peel-and-stick vinyl images that have proliferated over the past few years bring maturity to the decorating scene. And the variety continues to expand.
More artists are getting are involved, so there are a lot of hip designs available, says Kristina Seale, owner of Wallnutz, a Portland, Ore., company that sells wall stickers (www.wallnutz.com).
The images are all over the map, allowing homeowners to make their statement in words or pictures. Many are simple silhouettes, but the subjects range from nature to sports to video games.
Baby’s & Kids 1st Furniture, 16445 North Freeway, features peel-and-stick skateboarders on its walls. If that’s not your thing, you can look through books of other designs. At Why Not Toys, 319 Gentry in Old Town Spring, there’s a selection of chalkboard stickers. There are animal silhouettes, airplane shapes and geometric designs designed for chalk.
Baby’s & Kids 1st Furniture, 16445 North Freeway, features peel-and-stick skateboarders on its walls. If that’s not your thing, you can look through books of other designs. At Why Not Toys, 319 Gentry in Old Town Spring, there’s a selection of chalkboard stickers. There are animal silhouettes, airplane shapes and geometric designs designed for chalk.
The chalkboard stickers have been a draw at Sugarplum Dreams, 999 E. Basse Road. The decals give children license to write on the walls, and kiddos enjoy the freedom to move them around. They also can help with family communication.
In some cases, stickers stand in for furniture.
No room for a headboard in your ’tween’s cramped quarters? Paste up a one-dimensional sticker to give the room a more finished look. And you’re not limited to basic brown or black. The Mina Javid Nico headboard, for example, is available in nine colors from Blik Surface Graphics (www.whatisblik.com). At $40, it’s a bargain as furniture goes.
The affordability factor is one of the main draws of wall stickers.
“For just a little money you can change up a room really fast,” says Christiana Coop, co-owner of Ferm Living Shop (www.fermlivingshop.com), a wall-art company founded in Denmark.
At Wallnutz, stickers cost from $20 to $225. “You could do quite a bit for under $50,” says Seale.
The time investment is also minimal.
“People are so busy, they don’t have time to do things that are creative in a room,” says Seale, who adds that most stickers go up in about 10 minutes. “There’s absolutely nothing to it. Anyone can do it.”
Decals from Ferm Living come with a plastic scraper tool for rubbing them on the wall. Though they are more complicated than the peel-and-stick variety, Seale said a 47-by-30-inch world map went up in 30 minutes.
Many of the Web sites offer instructions, and Blik rates the difficulty of its stickers.
The stickers work best on flat surfaces. They will stick to walls with an orange-peel texture, but stucco, brick or other heavy textures aren’t recommended, according to Seale. Some can be moved.
Cloth stickers from Love Mae Store, an Australian company that sells through Etsy (www.etsy.com), are designed to be repositioned by little hands.
Adults likely would have a hard time resisting the paper-doll images that hang on the wall. Each doll comes with a wardrobe that hangs on a clothesline. The cloth stickers are washable. Prices range from $32 to $115 for the sets.
