Spoonflower Swimmers on Art Wall

This couple in a nicely updated 1939 home in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston has a blank wall in the back of their large walk-in closet.  They have a lot of colorful , modern art and wanted a backdrop for it that would be fun, but wouldn’t compete .

One of the gals is an administrator for the athletic department in a local school district – so this small print “ Swimmers “ design is just perfect.  In fact, the day I hung this, she was away at a swim meet in Austin ! 

Note that Spoonflower offers scores of designs under the “ Swimmers “ name, so be sure to check all of them, and all the colorways they come in, too. 

Detail

Spoonflower is a little different from most wallpaper companies, in that it’s material comes in individual panels, or sheets – which they call rolls .  Each of these is 24” wide, and then you choose the length you want, between 3’, 6’, 9’, and 12’.  Each roll comes nicely packaged in an individual thick plastic zip-lock bag . 
These ones are upside down, so I had to re-roll them so the pattern would be coming off the top of the roll . 

Here are some tips about hanging Spoonflower. 
First of all, I like their “ Pre-Pasted Smooth Removable “ option.  And it’s the only one I’ll work with.  Their “ Traditional Pebble “ is a heavy vinyl that requires special trimming , bubbles, and is better suited for commercial spaces.  And, the Peel & Stick – well, everyone ought to forget  that sad stuff.  Please read my link to the right about that material. 
In this photo, you can see that the white material is thin and translucent , allowing things underneath to show through, sort of like a shadow .  So I need to be careful to make my pencil marks and notes on the wall very lightly. 
Side note: Never write on the wall or paper with ink or marker or crayon or grease pencil – it will bleed through the wallpaper .

This is a pre-pasted material , meaning that a thin layer of paste is already applied to the back.  To activate the paste , all you need to do is dip it in water , run it through a water tray , or spritz the back with a squirt bottle (uneven and kills your wrist) .  Their paste is quite adequate.  But I do like to have a little extra assurance, so I will roll on a little of my Roman 780 wallpaper paste onto the back. 

Then I take a sponge and drip clean water from a bucket onto the back of the paper .  Next I use a paint roller to spread the mixture of water and paste around the back .  This both activates the pre-paste, and also spreads around a little extra adhesive . 

Next, the paper gets folded pasted-side-to-pasted-side ( called booking ), then rolled or folded loosely.  I like to dip the ends of the rolled strip into a bucket of water – just 1/8” or so, to prevent them from drying out while booking.  Then the strip is placed in a plastic trash bag to prevent it from drying out during the booking period – a few minutes.  I use this time to paste and book my next strip . 

Spoonflower Pre-Pasted Smooth is a little different from most papers, because it’s designed to be overlapped at the seams.  Here I am lining up a seam.  This overlap does show as a ½” wide ridge along the entire length of each strip.  With busy patterns, it’s not very visible. 

Even with sparse designs like this one, once it’s dry and flat, you don’t notice.  Here’s the overlapped seam looking toward the light, which is leaving a very minor shadow.  And the overlap can be a good thing.  For starters, most wallpapers shrink a little when the paste dries, so you can end up with slight gaps at the seams.  Overlapping eliminates that.  Also, if a wall is unstable underneath, due to incompatible layers of paint , or dusty walls, or other, the tension of these drying strips of paper can cause the layers inside the wall to come apart / delaminate – and that will result in paper that comes away from the wall, taking layers of paint and etc. along with them.  This usually cannot be repaired or “ glued back down .”     (Do a Search here to learn more)  So overlapping the seams disperses the tension caused by the drying paper, and eliminates any seam from landing on the wall (because the sheets are overlapped ), so no popped seams .

Here is the seam looking away from the light.

Because Spoonflower Smooth Pre Pasted is thin paper and water-activated , it absorbs a lot of moisture from the water.  So the material can’t help but expand .  This can result in bubbles on the wall.  Also, when air pockets develop, there is nowhere for the air to escape, so, again, bubbles and blisters. 

If there are huge bubbles, it may be worth taking a brush or plastic smoother and chasing them out.  Or using a pin or razor blade to poke tiny holes to let the air out. 

But, really, if you can just relax and let nature take its course, as the paper dries, these bubbles will dry flat and disappear.  Trust me. 

Another thing that can happen is wrinkles .  These tend to form in the same place on every strip , and coordinate with how the paper was booked and rolled after pasting . 

The worst of these can be chased out with a plastic smoother.  But there are dangers to over-using the smoother tools.  Doing so can stretch the wallpaper and cause it to warp, which means the pattern might not match up perfectly on the next strip.  Or it might cause wrinkles that can’t be brushed out.  Again – if you can just sit tight and let the paper dry naturally, the creases and folds will disappear. 

I did some experimenting and found that booking and then rolling the strip up like a newspaper resulted in more wrinkles.

It worked better to paste, book, and then fold gently and loosely. 

Then into the plastic bag to sit for a few minutes .

Spoonflower PrePasted Removeable Smooth .  I like this stuff. 
Removeable means that it’s designed to strip off the wall easily and with no/minimal damage to your wall when you redecorate down the road. 
I suspect this is made by York , as it’s very similar to their SureStrip line .  Good stuff. 

The order comes with a mock-up of the strips / rolls you’ve purchased.

Install instructions

Promo info from Spoonflower .

World Map Mural – Focus on Africa

This couple in a beautifully updated 1939 home (4-plex converted to single family) in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston loves Africa and has traveled there several times. This spare bedroom on the first floor is devoted to Africa. On the walls they have hanging artifacts from their travels.

And now they have a map of the continent , front and center!
accent wall

Close up looks like old paper that has been folded and stashed and aged , then uncovered and now placed on the wall.

The mural is custom-sized to the wall. Remember to add 3″ to both width and height, to accommodate trimming and also wonky walls.
The material comes as one big roll , with six panels all in one long piece. You have to unroll the whole thing and cut the panels apart . Note that five panels are 19″ wide. But that sixth one on the far right is only 16″ wide. I have cut off the 3″ overage. So when you’re plotting your lay-out, don’t go assuming that you will have six panels of the same width. That last panel is going to be whatever it needs to be, to custom-fit the size of the wall.
Here, I’m laying the panels out to compare dimensions of width and length with those of the wall . Also checking to be sure the sequence of panels is correct. Note the diagram provided by the company on the white sheet of paper at the top of the photo.

Here’s a close-up of the diagram / install instruction sheet .

The mural is by Rebel Walls , a part of Gimmersta . I love their hundreds of selections, their material , quality , and excellent customer service.

This particular mural is called World Map . I’m not sure, but it may come in other colors .

Here’s the mock-up the company sent. The homeowner requested that Africa be placed in the center . You see what a good job Rebel Walls did with that. The mural that we received was actually a little smaller, and didn’t contain that much of America on the left, nor the far right sides of the countries on the right.
Interestingly, the mural doesn’t meet up with itself. In other words, you can’t place two murals side-by-side. Look at the left, where America is. There’s only the eastern half of America. But there is no connecting western half of America on the right side of the mural. So you couldn’t order several of these and place them next to each other, to go around a bedroom , for instance. This may be because the mural was designed to fit one wall only , and to focus on Africa . It’s possible that the same mural is available so that it will connect to itself, and so that you could use it all the way around a room.

According to the shipping box, Rebel Walls is also connected with Sandberg , another manufacturer of fine wallpapers . This stuff comes from Sweden . It is a non-woven material and can be hung using the paste the wall method . I often prefer to paste the paper , but on this simple accent wall, I did paste the wall . Saves space, because I don’t have to set up my big table .
Non-woven wallpapers don’t expand when wet with paste like traditional papers do, which is a nice advantage for many reasons. They also are durable and stain-resistant . And are also designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, and with no damage to your wall when you redecorate .  Non-woven is MUCH better than the false-hopes peel & stick material being pushed by some mfgrs today. Click my link to the right.

Rebel Walls also includes special paste for this non-woven paper. This is important, because some other types of paste have been known to stain N-W’s, also called blushing – paper looks wet in areas, but never dries out .
It’s believed that excess moisture is a reason for this staining / blushing . Which is the main reason why I don’t used the paste provided by RW. If the powdered substance has to be mixed with water to turn into paste , it stands to reason that it can be too liquidy and could bleed through the surface of the wallpaper, causing staining.
I prefer a pre-mixed paste made by Roman called 780 . You can also use Roman 838 . These both have lower moisture contents, and have good record of not staining wallpapers . Most Sherwin-Williams stores carry these pastes. But call first!