Welcome to our series spotlighting our Featured Vendors from our Vendor Guide. The guide includes carefully curated vendors from the baby and children’s industry in design, retail, special services and much more.
Today we want you to meet Pop & Lolli, a whimsical brand that makes creative, colorful and imaginative wall decals and wallpaper. We adore the playful feel of these unique creations—they are sure to spark the imagination of your little one. Check them out for yourself, and read on learn how these crazy cool designs came to be.
What about Pop & Lolli makes you most proud?
With every set of Pop & Lolli’s chic experience-design decals you purchase, a large portion is donated to our sister charity that we launched at the same time as Pop & Lolli. With these donations, (It’s) Chic 2 Change will provide educational materials and resources to positively influence a South African child in need.
When we started Pop & Lolli, we thought it would be great to commit from the get-go to helping people that might not have the privileges that we have. It was important for us to commit to donating starting with our first sale and to use any success that Pop & Lolli might be blessed with to help children in South Africa.
However small it may be, it’s a start to transforming the notion of buying and to redefine the process of manufacturing. It’s a new philosophy of business that incorporates the old philosophy of helping. It’s that simple!
Do you have a signature product or design element?
Our Iconic Cultural World Map is certainly a favorite! This design encompasses all the whimsy, play and fun that Pop & Lolli offers, and it brings together many cultures, iconic elements and traditions. It’s a wonderfully gender-neutral design, and it works with almost any type of room decor and color scheme.
What advice do you have for parents when curating their nurseries? Any nursery must-haves?
Ensure that the larger elements, like furniture, are chosen for a longer life span—choose pieces that will grow with the child and still remain relevant in style, design and function for use into the future. But be sure to include smaller elements, like bedding and wall decor, with more age-appropriate and whimsical designs, and update them every so often. Such minor changes can create a large impact and refresh and update any space, and they don’t have to break the bank.
Where do you find your inspiration?
I have always had an intense passion for true African art and culture—the color and the vibrancy of the designs, the unique and extreme variance in style and the fine attention to detail are all awe-inspiring. South Africa is a gorgeous country and has tons to offer—most people have a hard time believing we have eleven official languages! It’s a true rainbow nation and a melting pot of many great things. The textures, the landscapes, the sunsets, the smells, the food, the color, the languages—one can only listen, smell, observe, taste and feel to know Africa is in your blood. And if it’s in your blood, it is a part of you, and you cannot help but to always be mesmerized and affected by it.
I grew up in South Africa in a super small, rural part of the country. As such, nature was a child’s best friend. This is probably one of the reasons why the nature, colors, sunsets, textures of the fields and crops and landscapes are so influential in my design thinking and creations. Growing up sure was way different compared to today! We were free to roam the fields and the farm, free to enjoy the pleasures and goodness of the earth ALL day long. We wanted to be outside. We had to be outside. Nature was our canvas on which to create our imaginary play. The trees, the flowers, the bugs, the animals—they all became the backdrop for every day’s activities. And what a wonderful blessing that is—infinite space and infinite beauty to allow one’s mind to run off wild!
I hope the nature of Pop & Lolli’s designs will serve as huge inspiration to kids across the world to embrace the outdoors and bring it alive inside their confined spaces. I believe our tell-your-own story-to-create-your-own-mural, mix-n-match and flexible designs will allow for such opportunities to enlarge any space and open windows (and opportunities) into a wonderful world of imagination and play!
Tell us your motto.
B-I-G-G-E-R is better! Always, forever. I definitely have a passion for all things big. Everything I do and touch and make and create tends to be on the bigger side. People experience with their senses, and I believe the only way to truly experience something is by immersing oneself in the creation. And the only way to immerse yourself is to believe it surrounds you, so size definitely helps to establish that illusion.
To learn more about Pop & Lolli, be sure to check out their listing in our Vendor Guide.
If you are interested in applying to become a Project Nursery Vendor, please click here.
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