Welcome to Flower Shop

Flowers are nature’s fireworks. But like the colorful flashes in the sky, they’re ephemeral - here today & often gone tomorrow. What if you could make them last ‘forever’? To commemorate the much-needed change in seasons, we’ve worked a little magic - well, sticker magic. Behold Bodega Blooms & Flower Shop, two magnificent new sheets of approximately 15 carefully clipped blossoms to light up your life. 

Bodega Blooms comes to you from the streets of NYC. It’s a celebration of the supernatural color that’s become indigenous to corner stores in communities across the five boroughs. Even when the City feels inexplicably cold, local bodegas perennially feature saturated flowers in all shapes and sizes, “touched up” with artificial color to extend their sell-by date. Like all natural flowers (rooted or otherwise), though, no amount of tenderness, love, and care can keep them alive. Each of the buds in Bodega Blooms, however, outlives their rooted relatives. Step inside Flower Shop, our second sticker sheet, and you’ll find a collection of 15 vases, decanters, and cups featuring vibrant flowers we’ve arranged ikebana-style, on black & white shelves. The piece is of historical significance, both to the world & Apply specifically. 

Until the mid-1800s, painting was the dominant technology for recording the world and making artistic rendering of it. While photography has conceptual origins dating back to the Renaissance, it was not until the work of pioneers like William Henry Fox Talbot that we began to appreciate the new medium’s unique advantages. In 1844, Talbot published The Pencil of Nature, the first commercially available book illustrated with photographs. In it, he featured Articles of Glass, the shelves & cut crystal pictured here. Where painters before him would use the representation of light on glass as the pinnacle of their practice, Talbot used photography to show the relative ease of showcasing not just one moment of refraction (which could take days to paint), but dozens at once. Talbot’s mission was to elevate photography (to the mantle of paragone), to be taken seriously as an artistic medium, capable of doing things that painting just could not. 

In keeping with Talbot’s tradition, both Bodega Blooms & Flower Shop are finished compositions (akin to what you might find in a painting or photograph) that offer more as stickers. Not only are they beautiful to look at, but you can - of course - peel them apart and add them as sprights of nature & color on the objects & surfaces that define your life. As with all Apply stickers, peeling reveals something special. In Bodega Blooms, you’ll find a photograph by Carol M. Highsmith of a corner store in the Bronx, with bouquets so bright they illuminate the street. In Flower Shop, you’ll find a macro shot of a dahlia bud at its aesthetic crescendo.

Get them for yourself or gift them to a friend. Use them one at a time or in “bouquet.” Add them to notebooks or on letters to loved ones. Add them to mirrors to help you get out of bed on the right foot and windows as a sign of nature when the sun is down. As with real flowers, there is no wrong way to use them. Have fun & enjoy!