Review: Arts & Bricks Wall Stickers and Window Clings
Posted by MeganL,
Did you ever want to preserve one of your child's LEGO creations, but you needed the bricks for something else? That was a problem faced by Kelly Barkhurst of Arts & Bricks - her family only had so much LEGO, but she wanted to keep her children's LEGO builds. As a result, she started her own business of making stickers to remember those creations. Kelly sent me a sampling of the stickers and decals - quite some time ago! As a result, I can tell you how these perform over the course of a few months.
I received these stickers and clings last summer. As luck would have it, I ended up moving several hundred miles within two weeks of them arriving, and all my LEGO collection (and these samples) were put into storage for the next four months.
Since I'm involved with both Brickset and the Women's Brick Initiative, I was sent stickers and decals representing both of those interests. The first group feature the logo of the Women's Brick Initiative, a copy of which I had sent by email. It's hard to see in this picture, but the top example is a wall sticker, and the bottom one is a window cling, as it has a much shinier finish. The dimensions of these are 7" x 5".
The printing is sharp, and the windows/clings are easy to remove from the backing. This sticker promptly got put on the wall of my LEGO room and has stayed there ever since.
The adhesive on the back is adequate for the job, and the sticker can be moved around several times (or rearranged if you don't get it quite straight). I learned that you could adjust to the sticker several times and it doesn't affect how well it sticks to the wall. I moved this sticker around a lot, sometimes after it had been in one place for a month or more. There was never a problem with it staying in its new place. It's also worth noting that there was no marking or damage to the paint underneath.
My experience was the same for the window clings. This cling has been attached to the glass doors of my Billy bookcase for the last few months.
In addition to defined logos, Arts & Bricks can also do customized orders, including larger sizes. Kelly asked if I had anything in mind for Brickset, and I told her to surprise me. That she did with this large Brickset sticker. The dimensions are 30 inches by 7 inches.
Its current home is gracing the wall over my photography station. It's a good thing that the adhesive works after several adjustments; with a sticker this size, it took a few attempts to get straight.
This sticker is an example of one of their most popular products - the Brick Built Name Sticker/Decal. Kelly and her son designed all the letters (8 studs wide by 8 bricks tall), obviously any name can be used.
Arts & Bricks has a presence on Instagram, and there are some videos there that show how a child's creations can be made into a sticker.
I found the pricing throughout the site to be very reasonable; it's a fun and easy way to decorate a wall in your child's room or your LEGO room. It has the bonus of not damaging paint or causing you to put holes in your walls.
You can take a look at the shop on their website, they have many premade patterns in addition to the customizing feature. There's a sale going on at the moment; plus they're offering free U.S. shipping.
Many, many thanks to Kelly Barkhurst at Arts & Bricks for the wall stickers and window clings, and her amazing patience while waiting for this review. All opinions expressed are mine.
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9 comments on this article
This is interesting but i dont think i would want this i rather get real lego lol
This makes me look forward to having the space to display not only sets that I've purchased throughout the years, but also to display some of my mostly intact builds that I created as a kid in the 90s-00s! Stickers seem like a cool idea if you want to remember a set but don't care to keep it together.
Stickers of MOCs sounds amazing!
Or how about just using a camera?
I like seeing different ways people immortalize their MOCs. I don't get fancy with it, I just take some photos, then go through the time-consuming (depending on MOC size) but rewarding process of recreating step by step instructions before taking it apart so I can put it back together next time should I choose to.
@EriktheRed said:
"This makes me look forward to having the space to display not only sets that I've purchased throughout the years, but also to display some of my mostly intact builds that I created as a kid in the 90s-00s! Stickers seem like a cool idea if you want to remember a set but don't care to keep it together."
Indeed, I can fondly remember a few I had to rebuild
@LegoSonicBoy:
The way I do it is by buying new parts for the next thing I want to build. I've considered getting shirts made of a few of them, but I've never actually done it.
The problem with tearing apart older MOCs to build new ones is that they really are gone at that point. Unless you've kept a digital file that can be used to rebuild them, it's like stripping canvasses to paint new paintings. Barring the pandemic, my LUG has been averaging over 20 shows per year, and I've personally been doing around 15 of them as of 2019. I still populate the streets with cars that I started building in '06 or '07, and it took me most of that time to build up enough stock to actually handle an entire layout's roads on my own. I can't imagine trying to churn out enough new designs to cycle through them on a regular basis.
I know there are people who like to build one really big model per year, take it on the convention circuit, and then scrap it to build something new for the next year. I know there are people who will keep something built indefinitely, and then suddenly decide they're tired of it and ready to build something new. And I even knew a guy who, during his time in my LUG, would build a new model, display it at _one_show_, and then destroy it and build something new for the next one. Given our packed event schedule, he had to be doing this at least once a month.
This is a great idea for decorating a bedroom. I’ve been using fatheads and roommates stickers in my kids bedrooms for years. The idea of customized stickers is absolutely brilliant, as is the idea of Lego designs as that is something not available from the major sticker companies.
Do the images come direct from Lego Design Studio or do you just attach a photograph? If photos then there are plenty of competitive places to obtain stickers from, otherwise by designing on-line the stickers should be better quality than a photograph.