Wall Slicks Review and Giveaway

If you are like me, you are always wishing your house looked fabulous. I see decorating ideas, and paint finishes, and I get all these grandiose visions in my mind. My problem is that we are a lazy folk. We don't like to paint. The choosing of colors, prepping the walls, taping off ceilings and baseboards... need I go on? It's just too much. ESPECIALLY with a toddler underfoot. I am also a fan of bright colors, bold designs and things that "pop". Enter Wall Slicks!

Wall Slicks is a completely fab company that designs vinyl wall decals to spruce up your home! They have everything from simple polka dots, to elaborate tree decals. You can customize the decals with the rainbow of 39 different colors that Wall Slicks offers. So, why a wall decal? Well, first of all, it's a really inexpensive way to add something really detailed to your homes decor. I don't know if you've ever looking into have a mural painted, or doing a faux paint finish on your walls, but it is very expensive, time consuming and labor intensive. I'm personally not into ANY of those!

Wall stickers also allow you to change the look of a room pretty quickly and easily. Once you paint something, it's there for good, unless you are willing to paint over all of it. With a decal, you can just peel it off, move it somewhere else, and start with something fresh! I love geometric designs, but they are VERY hard to paint. We did a wall of stripes in Chunky Monkey's nursery and it was HARD! Its really tough to get things spaced out, and level. With Wall Slicks, if you make a mistake, you can gently peel it up, and start over!  It's such a simple way to make a big statement in your rooms.

Wall Slicks offers TONS of designs. There are geometric designs, nursery designs, sports themese, holiday decals, and ever words and sayings! Wall Slicks was super generous, and sent us TWO designs to check out. Our kitchen was bleak and white, so I decided to pick designs that would work in there. The first design we were sent was the new Poppies design. We chose to the flowers in red, because all of our accessories in the kitchen are red. No kidding, I even have a red crock pot and red coffee maker! 

The Poppies wall sticker design comes with two 24"flower decals in the color of your choice. The center of the flower is cut out of the vinyl, so it shows through as whatever color your wall is. In our case, that means the design is red and white. The wall decals are on a paper just like Con-Tact paper that you use to line your cabinet shelves. Over top of the decal is a clear lining. You peel the clear lining off the base paper, and the decal sticks to the clear paper. You then adhere the clear paper to the wall, and get the design centered where you want it. The last step is to peel the clear layer off of the design, leaving the design on the wall. 

It was pretty easy! Peeling the design off the base paper was a snap, took about 10 seconds. We got it centered on the wall, and then smoothed it down, to get the design to adhere to the wall. We then began peeling the clear coat off. This was a little trickier, but it wasn't horrible. You do need to hold the wall decal down onto the wall when you first start. We found that it was much easier with 2 people working on it together. The center part of the poppies did tend to not want to stick to the wall, and stay on the clear paper, and we did rip a small area. We just slowed down, and peeled slowly, and it turned out fine. You can't even tell where we ripped it. Once we got the clear sheet off, we lifted some areas of the decal and smoothed it back down to remove the few air bubbles. It took about a half hour total to do! It looks totally fabulous, too!

 Here are a few videos showing the different stages of application and completion: (helpful hint: Turn off the music on the blog. Scroll down, and on the right hand sidebar, you'll see my music player. Just hit pause!)

The second design we were sent was the Diamond Pattern wall stickers. I'm not 100% sure which size we were sent. Each sheet had 11 decals, and there were 4 sheets. So we ended up with 44 decals, but none of the packs on the website show 44. We realized there weren't going to be enough to put the diamonds as close together as we had planned. So, we reassessed and decided to space them out quite a bit more. 

Now, these were easier to get on the wall, because there was no clear top sheet over the decals. You just peeled them off the base paper, and stuck them up there, so that was nice. The trickier part here was that we had to be sure the design was straight and even, since it was a geometric pattern. With the flowers, you could just stick them up any way you liked, and didn't have to worry about it being level. So, we got out the level, and put it on the wall. We used the level to do the entire first row. We put the diamonds tip to tip, and then removed every other one, to create a more spaced out pattern. We did 5 rows like this, and every row alternated. Once we had the first row laid out, we just used the diamonds to continue to space everything evenly. Really, once we figured out how we wanted it to look, and did the first row, it went quickly. It took us about a half hour from start to finish! Again, we found it easier with two people. I peeled the diamonds and handed to Tom, and he stuck them on the wall. 

All in all, we are VERY pleased with the way it turned out. I need to see if I can purchase just one more sheet of the diamond wall stickers. We need exactly 12 more to finish the last two rows and we have one left over here. So, one more sheet would do it. We spent an hour total working on on the projects, and at the end of the hour, our kitchen was left looking MUCH brighter, and with a polished look. I would absolutely use these again, and actually would really like to figure out a way to incorporate a Wall Slicks design in our bedroom! They are an easy, inexpensive way to brighten up any room. Think about all you could do in an apartment, or dorm room where you generally aren't allowed to paint! 

Lucky for YOU, Wall Slicks has generously offered to give a Newly Wed, Newly Bred reader any Wall Slick of their choosing!! For your first mandatory entry, head over to Wall Slicks and take a look around. Tell me what design and color you would choose if you won! This MUST be done first, or all other entries will not count.

Extra Entries:

1. Become a Facebook Fan of Wall Slicks
2. Follow Wall Slicks on Twitter
3. Sign up for the Wall Slicks newsletter (link on the left side bar)
4. Follow my blog through Google Friend Connect
5. Subscribe to my blog by email (must be confirmed)
6. Follow me on Twitter & tweet this giveaway up to 2x per day. Tweets must be at least 4 hours apart, and you must include my twitter name & Wall Slicks twitter name. Leave a permalink.
7. Blog about this giveaway & include a link to this post. Leave me the link!
8. Grab my button & leave a link where I can find it.
9. Become a Facebook Fan of NWNB. 

*Disclaimer: I was provided 2 wall decals by Wall Slicks for this review. This has no bearing on my honest review, and I was not compensated monetarily for my thoughts.

Fine print: This giveaway is open to US & Canada. Giveaway runs through 2/24/10. Winner announce on 2/25. Winning entries will be verified, and false entries will be disqualified.