ParaPrawns

I like to think of myself as a pretty creative gal. I have my own fairly successful silver jewelry business on the side and like to engage in artsy, craftsy type shenanigans of all kinds. (Although I utterly suck at sewing. I can manage a fairly simple square bag with little difficulty and no pattern, but if you asked me to make anything that included arms or legs, I could probably successfully create a thriving industry for mutants.) I am rarely at a loss for design ideas, but occasionally, VERY occasionally, I’ll see a design I just have to swipe for my own personal use. Although I would never DREAM of marketing someone else’s design for gain, if I want it on my very own personal wall, you’d better believe I’m going to have it.

This is what I have done in regards to the decorating of the Prawn’s room. A friend of mine introduced me to a very talented design company who I must give 100% credit to for coming up with THE PERFECT PRINT for my nursery wall, the parachuting prawns pictured above. The catch? It was part of a limited edition run and was completely sold out. Well, quite frankly, one cannot mess with perfection and I was damned if I was going to let that fact that I could not BUY this design keep me from adorning my walls with it. So, being the little Photoshopping minx I am, I blew the design up, traced around it and made it printable. I made stencils out of it and have been duplicating the design in several different mediums and colors.

My utter favourite was care of my hugely talented father, who’s woodworking skills have yielded the most lovely baby gift: a parachuting prawn mobile. He has lovingly cut out three perfect prawns with parachutes and two clouds to hang from two cleverly designed mobile attachments and has sent them to me for final painting. I just about cried when I opened the package this morning- they were SO well done; better than I could have possibly hoped for.

I admit it is a vaguely unconventional design for a nursery. Prawns aren’t particularly cuddly. In fact, most crustaceans give me the creeping horrors. Despite growing up in Maryland, famous for it’s crabs, I am still only able to eat crab meat if it bears no resemblance whatsoever to an actual crab. (Let’s face it, they look like giant spiders, you have to boil them alive to eat them on the shell and ANYTHING that still has it’s eyeballs to stare at you with while you’re eating it is just plain ghoulish) Despite this horror of undersea monsters, I adore this design and figure that, if anything, it’ll make the Prawn less likely to ask me to fix him or her Prawn cocktail later in life. (Blergh.) Mr. DD loves the design too, but if you ask me, I think he also likes the idea of our children finding this thing in our attic long after we’re going and going “WTF?”

I hope no one thinks I’m a big, fat thief or anything for skanking this design. Like I said, I would never even consider trying to pass someone else’s work off as my own and would CERTAINLY never try to sell it, but I imagine that the Prawn will probably be called “The Prawn” well after his or her birth, and we liked the idea of being able to celebrate the nickname. Plus, neither of us could live with teddy bears or other fuzztastic baby clichés on the walls.