The original tile tattoos: Vintage Con-Tact self-adhesive tile appliques

I am cleaning out my basement “museum” and came across these lovelies: Vintage vinyl decals by Con-Tact designed to turn blah tile into flower power awesome tile. I have four designs in my collection >> 

I put them up in my own bathroom just to see how they worked. Even after all these decades unopened, the adhesive stickiness still worked. The decals look really good — really natural — on the tile: Unless you looked really closely, you would think each tile was a ceramic-fired design.

In addition, it seems that the vinyl will come off easily, if you pry your fingernail under one edge. That is, the adhesive is easy-on, easy peel-off. But, the decal won’t come off on its own.

On the back of each package, Con-Tact gave you lots of suggestions about how to use these tile tattoos. It also notes they are waterproof and not affected by steam. I’m going to leave these up in my bathroom for a while and see how they do.

As I said, I have four designs in all. Even though I want to hoard them — for art projects or maybe another weebit apartment in the future — I think I’ll be putting these up on ebay soon. I need to lighten up the “museum”.

I googled and found that “tile tattoos” are a thing today. It’s fun to see their Con-Tact brand historical antecedents: Sock it to me baby, let it all hang out! 

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