This is arty and colourful stuff, but is best protected with a glass top, as spilled water damages the decals. They include cut-out sections so that the surface below shows through and becomes part of the design. Surface Skins (from around €16), made by Blik and designed by the American artist Rex Ray, also work well on desks and tables. How cool is that? Stickers don't only belong on the wall. There aren't any – all Banksy designs are open source. This would be a good time to invite your local fine-art graduate to tea.ĭecals, once in place, look as though the image is stencilled on the wall – and the Binary Box has played on this by reproducing classic graffiti motifs from the legendary street artist Banksy. Putting up the stickers is relatively easy – you use a squeegee to eliminate bubbles – but getting them into position takes quite a bit of skill. Or you can have 'Pop Art Sparrows' (€30), realistic drawings of birds in pop colours (from 17 x 23cm to 48 x 25cm). Nicely positioned, the composition would fill an average wall. The 'Three Grey Trees' pack (€97) includes the silhouettes of three trees, four birds, and an assortment of green leaves that you can place wherever you want (does anyone remember Kalkitos transfers?). Vegetarians may not find this as funny as I do. The 'Cut of Beef' decal (95 x 55 cm) costs around €25 and shows an outline of a cow divided into sirloin, rump etc. The quirky designs from the Binary Box are not expensive. "They're perfect for rented accommodation because you can remove them with a hairdryer and they don't leave marks on the wall." "Decals are a really good alternative to wallpaper," Etchells explains. Sticker technology has come on a lot since then, says Rob Etchells of the Binary Box, a company that specialises in removable wall art. ![]() When they finally came away, they took a layer of paint or varnish with them. Now, I have childhood memories of bubbly vinyl stickers that peeled at the edges, and smaller paper stickers that clung resolutely to any surface no matter how hard you scrubbed. "It dawned on me that I could collect images like I used to collect stamps, and use our state-of-the-art print technology to create unique interior products based on our wonderful pictures," he explains. "There is something of the nerd attached to the avid comic reader," Pilkington admits, "but I don't think that it's anything to be ashamed of and I suppose we're guilty of that too."Įven the company's founder, Michael Ayerst, began as a stamp collector. Surface View has also designed collages from the hand-drawn sound effects from the 'Beano' (Wham! Crash! Pop!). People are using the old-fashioned comics in a very contemporary way, playing with scale and creating interesting crops," says Pickford. "We've re-mastered the images to such a standard that you can choose a small section of the image and enlarge it to cover a whole wall. "We're giving the illustrations a new lease of life by turning them into something that can inject fun and colour into a room," Pickford explains. Despite their slapstick humour, the drawings are both detailed and skilled, from the fountain pens of renowned 'Beano' artists like Leo Baxendale, Ken Reid and David Sutherland. ![]() Until relatively recently, the 'Dandy' and the 'Beano' were drawn by hand. "They do appeal to kids, but I suspect that the driving force often comes from the bigger kids in the family." "The 'Beano' front covers make epic posters," says Tom Pickford of Surface View. Well readers, it seems all decals of cartoon characters are not at pocket money prices. Poster-sized prints cost around €67, depending on the finish, and can either be mounted or stuck directly on the wall. You can now get a vintage 'Beano' front cover from 1975 (showing the 3p price tag!) blown up to cover a whole wall.Ī 300 x 240cm mural will cost about €475, while smaller murals cost about €73 per square meter. 'Decal', by the way, is the posh word for a sticker. Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered that DC Thomson, the publisher behind the 'Beano' and the 'Dandy', has gone into partnership with Surface View, a company that creates high-quality wall decals. We chuckled at the anarchic antics of Billy the Whizz and the Bash Street Kids. Once again, the comic was a highlight of our week. ![]() Decades later, my sons had the 'Beano' on order at the local newsagent. ![]() The love affair with the decidedly non-PC comic became a family tradition. In her day, the 'Beano' and the 'Dandy' were published on alternate weeks because of post-war paper shortages. Yes, I was an eager 'Beano' reader, just like my mother before me. Back in 1975, I was a card-carrying, badge-wearing member of the Dennis the Menace fan club (there were two badges – a metal one of Dennis himself, and a hairy badge of his dog, Gnasher, with googly eyes).
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