Bringing a Child's Room to Life with My Wonderful Walls: Review and Giveaway! (Closed)

We recently transitioned our 25-month-old daughter S to her new "big girl room" to free up the nursery for her baby brother. We really wanted her to love her new room and not feel like she was getting "kicked out" of the old one (just one of many considerations when a second child arrives!) so we got her a brand new furniture set and set out to personalize her walls with something really special. I recalled how proud and excited my good friend's daughter was when she moved into her own big girl room (she'd just turned 2 as well) which she'd helped design herself - from the purple paint colour to the beautiful butterfly stickers flapping their way across two of her walls. I knew our daughter would love to participate in a special project like this too!

Enter My Wonderful Walls, a family-run company based in Tennessee, which offers nursery murals, wall decals and canvas art for children's rooms, in a wide assortment of gorgeous themes from Jungle Safari to Princess to Flight of Dragons.

I discovered the company via a blog review/giveaway and was impressed by the quality and quantity of products offered, so I was more than thrilled when they accepted my offer to partner up on our daughter's big girl room project!

With a zillion other things going on (baby on the way, basement renos, etc.) we didn't have a lot of time on our hands so we decided to go the decal/sticker route. We hoped this would also allow S to get hands on with the project - something that would be more challenging if we chose the stencil option. Check out this product video showing how quick & easy it is to put up a sticker set!

S and I had a heap of fun right from the beginning, browsing available themes and playing with their Virtual Mural Maker - an awesome tool for trying out image layouts prior to tackling the child's room itself! S' two favourite sets were Under the Sea and Awesome Acorn Family Tree. The family tree is SUPER cute, though I thought Under the Sea would allow a little more creative freedom for her so we went with that. The folks at My Wonderful Walls were generous enough to send not only the sticker set itself, but also a custom name sticker for that extra personal touch!

Under the Sea Wall Sticker Kit - Product Details: 

• 62 large fabric wall stickers
• make an Ocean Theme Wall Mural in minutes
• repositionable and reusable
• layerable
• amazing detail in the designs
• made from SafeCling™ fabric that won’t stretch or tear
• leaves no residue when removed
• handmade paper look
• no white edges – looks like it is painted on the wall
• just peel and stick

My Review:

Our stickers arrived promptly packaged in a huge cardboard tube. One end of the tube managed to get crushed sometime during its journey over, however I was relieved to discover there was no damage to the product itself. I knew the stickers would be big, but their actual size still surprised me a little! I got S to do her "sleeping bunny" pose beside the fully unrolled sheet to illustrate. :)

Her personalized name sticker came on a smaller sheet of its own.

S was super-excited to get going! Her grandparents were over for a visit the night we started and she pointed out all the creatures to them and chattered on about where each sticker was going to go. We began a little close to her bedtime that night and ended up needing a second evening to complete the project. Overall, my husband, daughter and I spent about 1.5 hours putting up the whole set. Not a huge time investment at all for such a fab result, if I do say so myself! My husband and I put up the bigger stickers (with direction from our daughter) and she put up a bunch of the smallest stickers herself. Admittedly, I had to curb the "Type A" part of my personality a bit ("Wait a minute - shells don't float in the middle of the water!") in order to let her creative juices flow, however (buoyant shells notwithstanding) she already appears to have a keen sense of attractive spacing and layout - don'tcha think? :)

Wall 1 (and the proud artist!):

Wall 2:

When we asked our daughter what she thought of her decorated walls, she remarked "they're pretty!" and said her favourite sticker was her name. She also loves the mermaid stickers, calling them Ariel and Triton (from "The Little Mermaid"). She likes to give people tours of her new "Under the Sea" fantasy world, and she often talks about her stickers first thing in the morning when she wakes up!

Let's look at how the kit measures up under various categories.

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Appearance: These stickers are absolutely gorgeous. They are colourful, whimsical and the attention to detail is incredible. Kudos to the artist! True to description, once applied they do appear to be painted directly on the wall for an extremely polished finish.

Ease of Use:  The provided instructions were clear and easy-to-follow, so we were able to launch into the project confidently. The stickers ranged from extremely simple to mildly challenging (largest / most "finicky") to apply. Our 2-year-old was able to peel off and stick the smallest items (shells, schooling fish, etc.) herself, and my husband and I could handle the majority of the larger items individually. We did find it helpful to "tag team" the octopus sticker (the largest of the set); with its five long tentacles it would have been quite tricky to apply this one properly with just a single set of hands. The stickers adhered very nicely to the wall; they're resistant to bubbling and any air pockets that do sneak in are easily fixed by unpeeling and reapplying.

Quality & Durability: With our toddler taking part in the project, we certainly put this category to the test, and lemme tell ya - these stickers are industrial-strength! Several ended up either getting stuck to themselves or applied to the wall improperly and needing to be adjusted. One of the stickers our daughter pulled off the sheet herself was the squid. With its jillion little tentacles we had a bit of a sticky mess on our hands, however with some TLC our husband and I were able to salvage the li'l guy pretty readily. Despite our repeated suggestion that our daughter walk around the sheet, her little feet did a lot of clomping directly on the stickers but this didn't cause any noticeable damage either. All in all, we successfully applied all 62 stickers in the set without a single tear. As for reorganization/reuse, the adhesive on these stickers appears to be quite strong so I would guess each one could be relocated at least 2-3 times.

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Overall, my husband and I agree that these stickers are Full of Awesome! In pretty much every way. They are beautiful, vivid, detailed, easy to apply and extremely durable. If we were to embark upon another room project involving kids wall murals (perhaps for the little guy?), we wouldn't hesitate to order from My Wonderful Walls again!

Here's a little video we put together of our experience, from our daughter's initial excitement scoping out all the funky sea creatures, to applying stickers of various sizes, to the grand "unveiling" of the final results (and our DD's commentary). Enjoy!

Buy It:

All My Wonderful Walls products (stickers, stencils, etc.) can be ordered directly from the company website. Shipping is free on orders over $90 within the continental United States and there are flat fees for international shipping. Use the special discount code MTM1217 and receive 15% off your order! (Valid until Jan 25, 2013.)

Win It:

My Wonderful Walls has generously offered to give away a $100 gift code to spend on anything in their store to one lucky Manager to Mom reader! Open to Canada and the United States.

To enter, fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Please follow all instructions within each entry option to ensure your entries are valid.  


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure:  The prize is being provided and shipped to the winner by My Wonderful Walls.  I received no financial compensation for writing my review or offering this giveaway, although I did receive the sample kit free of charge.  This is my completely honest opinion above and may be different from yours.