Erika Pantages was lost in North Vancouver, trying to find a birthday party, when she stumbled upon some graffiti near Marine Drive and Capilano Road that made her stop and take a photo.
The words "Every day is a blessing" were scrawled onto the side of a building. "I just thought it was great," says Pantages, who added that snapshot to a collection of graffiti photographs she had taken around B.C. From the inspirational to the funny to the downright kooky, some of Pantages' other photogenic finds included "We are the ones we've been waiting for," "Made you look" and "Relax!" After amassing quite a few images, the Strathcona resident decided it was time to do something with them. Always passionate about home décor, she opted to transfer her favourite spray-painted sayings from their cold concrete canvases onto fluffy pillows.
"I just wanted to take that hard aspect and make it soft," she says. Last spring, Pantages launched Pillow Fight. Her seven-year-old daughter Tallulah (and self-proclaimed company president) came up with the name. The Pillow Fight graffiti collection includes nine luxury toss pillows that each feature one of Pantages' photos digitally printed onto a frayed cotton panel and sewn onto a Turkish linen pillow case with a feather down insert.
This new venture comes a few years after Pantages wound down Dirty Laundry, a successful children's clothing line she had co-founded with Teresa Findlay.
"The T-shirt industry was fun, but it was a very hard market to make here in Vancouver and ship around the globe."
Over the past few years, she has watched the home renovation and interior design market explode, and has grown fond of Love It Or List It and other TV shows that offer insight into the industry.
"I think for a lot of us it's not feasible to redo your whole house, but you throw a couple of new pillows in your living room and it changes the whole look," she says. "You can just add that little touch and it just changes the room."
Working on this collection has allowed Pantages to preserve bits of graffiti that have captivated her imagination and that stood out from the sea of tags found in every alley. "I don't want to be glamourizing graffiti, because I understand that that is not so good," she says, recognizing it costs property owners money to cover up the vandalism. Her pillows measure 20 square inches and retail for $179 online at pillowfightfactory.com and at the Country Furniture locations on Marine Drive in North Vancouver and Granville Street in Vancouver.
Partial proceeds will be donated to Project Limelight, a free performing arts program for children living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Up next, Pantages is working on two more Pillow Fight collections: the Children's Series will feature smaller-sized pillows for kids and the Sweetheart Series will incorporate love-themed imagery.
