RE-SI-DEN-TIAL Products??

Yes! Bet you didn’t know that Vital Signs offers products that have to do with decorating someone’s living space? Think Again.

One of the things that I particularly enjoy about the sign and graphics business that we are in, is our ability to design & produce many creative applications.

When Steve (my husband & Vital Signs Co-Owner) & I sprinted into ‘ Empty Nesterhood ‘, we decided to sell our big house & buy a condo. One of the things that I thought might be fun is to infuse various art applications that we have the ability to design and produce in our business, into our home decorating space.

What Kind Of Design Applications?

We began this process by finding decorative artwork that we would like to display in our home. There are many stock art sites online which allow individuals or businesses to purchase a digital art file(s) at a very affordable price. Even taking one’s personal photographs or sketches can become custom art, like we did below. There are various printing media choices that Vital Signs offers in which to print the designs on. For instance, we could have chosen a poster paper-type media to print on, put the print in a frame & hung it on the wall.

A Touch of Pittsburgh!

Or we might have chosen one of our newer self-adhesive fabric medias, which is an easy re-positional, peel & stick type. This media can be moved, re-used and is a wonderful choice for apartment dwellers and those who do not wish to make nail-holes in their walls.

However, what we chose for a few different art pieces in our home, was to print on canvas. Canvas now comes in multiple textures and finishes which allows for interesting effects. We simply stretched the canvas across a frame & then installed the art piece .

Glass Art ~ Picture taken at Phipps Conservatory

Forever Blowing Bubbles!

Custom Wallpaper, Too?

One of the popular trends with wallpaper, is to create a “focal wall”. That is, to apply wallpaper to one wall within a room to highlight it for effect. With this in mind, we chose a downstairs bathroom to apply our dramatic birch tree design to one wall. For a mural, wall wrap or custom wallpaper, Vital Signs has a few materials to choose from. We can use traditional wallpaper (which does require wallpaper glue & some type of lamination or over-protection). We can also use the above-mentioned peel & stick fabric media or even a low-tack removable vinyl, which is what we chose for our bathroom. If we get tired of it or want to try a different design, we simply peel it off the wall. So easy and no raw fingertips, broken nails or bad language involved.

Our Bathroom Birch Trees

What Else Can You Make?

I had always wanted to create a wall collage paying tribute to Steve’s alma-mater, West Point. So I chose the perfect living room wall space in which to do this. I started with his very large, framed college diploma. I surrounded the diploma with a lovely West Point plate on one side and an artist-commissioned irreverent metal donkey bust (the Army Mascot) wearing a ” Go Army “ scarf on the other side. I then added the Vital Signs-produced coup de grace design element to the top of the grouping, a room-matching engraved sign with the humorous, yet serious message, ” Eat, Drink and Beat Navy “!

EAT, DRINK & BEAT NAVY!!

Every room should be so fun!

Our most recent Vital Signs-generated design contribution is a frosted vinyl window application that we (Steve) applied. Our condo design includes a tall, slender window which lives above a stairway landing. It has always looked rather lonely. Off to the stock art sites I went in search of the perfect design. I was able to find a very simple, meandering bamboo tree design. Frosted vinyl is a neat application. It can give any window or glass door an expensive and custom etched glass look. There are two types of frosted vinyl that we use. One is a matte type, while the other includes very subtle sparkles which delicately twinkle when the sun shines through them.

A Touch of Bamboo

Steve may have just thought that the remodeling & ” honey-do ” list would shrink because our living space did. Au contraire.. not with all of the many custom design capabilities at Vital Signs.

Got It..

So the message here is that Vital Signs can do this for you too! We pride ourselves on our creativity and ‘ thinking outside of the box ‘ (or architectural space) ideas. But those creative ideas are not limited to use in only commercial spaces. One-of-a-kind art pieces and design applications don’t have to break the bank!

The next time you are thinking about the design prospects for your work or home living space, keep Vital Signs in mind. We are happy to brainstorm all of your creative and one-of-a-kind design possibilities!