Stickers Here, Stickers There, Stickers Everywhere… Not Anymore!
Kids love stickers. They’ll put them on anything in sight. But trying to remove stickers from most surfaces is a real chore. Here’s a real cheap and easy solution for giving the kids a place to stick their stickers on display without us adults cringing.
My daughter gets stickers all the time—in sticker books, cards/packages from grandma, birthday party goody bags… but her recent obsession is collecting produce stickers. You know, the stickers on your bananas and oranges, etc. She loves those! (I don’t understand why, but…) Pretty soon she’ll have the produce codes (those 4 or 5 digit numbers) memorized like her grandfather does.
She’ll often unload a whole sticker sheet onto a piece of paper. But when she was younger, she would put them on other surfaces like walls, furniture, books, and dolls. I know putting them on a blank piece of paper is so boring, plus she wanted to be able to see the stickers!
But just because I understood her need to stick them around the house, didn’t mean I was happy about it. Most stickers are not the removable/repositionable kind (hey, sticker makers, why not?). And those foam stickers? I despise those! You think you are removing the sticker, when you realize you only got a layer of the foam, and the rest of the foam and the sticker part are still there! Chiseling away at that stuff with my finger nails has not been fun.
My solution is contact paper! I used clear, but it could be any color or pattern. I stuck it on the side of a cabinet in our kitchen. I then made a “frame” out of black tape, stuck to the edge of the contact paper so I wouldn’t be cursing myself later when we decide to take it down.
This area has been up for almost 2 years now. It hasn’t peeled off, but I have tested it to make sure it will still come off cleanly. Looks good!
Now my daughter knows this is her sticker area, and this is the ONLY place she is allowed to put stickers. She usually abides by this rule…
She also sometimes writes on her area (you can see some of it in the pictures). I don’t encourage this, mainly because I’m afraid she’ll use a sharp pencil that will rip the contact paper or she’ll press too hard with a pen or pencil and damage the cabinet. So far that hasn’t happened, but I don’t really want to take the chance. But creating a similar framed area for drawing, with suitable crayons or markers nearby, could also be a great project.
You can put up contact paper anywhere you have a clean, dry, smooth surface. It could be in a play area, a bedroom, the living room… wherever you can think of!
Do you have another solution to the sticker problem to share? I’d love to hear about it!
I wonder if you could use plain white Contact paper without removing the backing. It could be tacked to a wall or cupboard, or held on a refrigerator with strong magnets.
I love your blog….lots of cool ideas! Thanks!
Thanks! Since it comes in a roll, it might take a little effort to get it to lay flat without the paper and backing layers wrinkling, but that would certainly work! Using a colored or patterned contact paper could be fun too!
Haha this is adorable . a bulletin board of stickers sounds like a fun stress relieving hobby for anyone .. stickers on digital photos can achieve the same purpose too with apps like PhotoStamped