Editor’s Note: The following #RADGEAR is brought to you by the folks at Plak That.
Get. On. My. Wall! Definitely better than your run of the mill framed print.
Not to brag, but I live in a pretty awesome little pad. I have this rad view of the ocean and the Palos Verdes Peninsula that makes my humble home base all out perfect. In fact, I’ve been so enamored with that fricken’ view that for the first two years of calling it home I didn’t bother hanging a single thing on my walls. No creepy yet sophisticated artwork, no framed photos I paid $400 for at some photographer’s gallery. Friends love to make fun of me for never taking the time to spruce the place up. “It’s so boring,” they say. Just plain, empty walls…and that view.
You see, for several years now I’ve been at that awkward transition for a single, young, professional adult who surfs. It’s that point in your life where you’re not living with a significant other who can decorate with pretty, homey things and it’s still ok because well, you live with somebody of the opposite sex. On the flip side, I’m past the teenage years of cutting Kelly Slater posters and Reef ads out of magazines and hanging them on my bedroom wall. #BachelorProblems. I’ve wanted a home where I can walk into the living room and feel that view of the ocean just outside my kitchen window without going the full cheesy, check out all this stuff I poached from an arts and crafts store by the beach route. But keeping the stoke alive inside your humble abode without feeling like your shrine was designed by Steve Spicoli is tricky business.
And that’s where Plak That stepped my home decorating game up. They’re a customizable printing shop that pumps out award plaques for clients like the Dew Tour. It so happens they have a printer that cranks out prints onto just about anything flat and their bread and butter is wooden planks. To add one final twist, they actually take custom orders of your own photos. I dig that. I can upload a photo of my own on their site, create my own wood plaque, and suddenly I’m the next Chris Burkard. At least at home I am. And now I’m like a Pinterest obsessed teen. At $120 for a 18.5″ x 27.5″ print you’re spending significantly less for a quality print of your own work than if you were to pick out a lineup shot of some tropical wave that’s hanging on the walls of every other home on the coast. And that’s their most expensive print, with smaller planks down to as low as $20. I’ve seen framed photos that run around that $120 range and even above $500, but none of them were photos I’ve taken myself, giving me a personalized feel and sense of pride that actually makes me want more prints on my wall. Plak That’s website has a really simple uploader where you build out and order your prints. It’s like creating an Instagram post that you can get creative with, and instead of thumbing out a hundred hashtags at the end you get something all your own to hang at home.
If Plak That has any limitations it’s that not all your photos are going to look amazing when printed onto wooden planks. But that’s completely objective anyway. Depending on the quality of the photo you want to use and the color palette, your photo, etc, it can be challenging finding the right plank finish for every shot. But honestly, creating and playing around with the different design options until you get the one you love becomes half the fun. And the concept is so unique that pretty much anything you make is going to catch your eye. They sent me my first print, a 18.5″ x 27.5″ lineup shot, and it’s now hanging in the living room. No more need for run of the mill framed pictures at home. No more empty walls. It’s finally starting to look like I moved into that sweet little two bedroom by the beach more than three weeks ago…one plaque at a time.
Order your own custom print for Plak That’s Xmas in July sale on Saturday, July 25, here
