My PaperIllusion Story
Presented by Carrie (not Kelly)
In 2004, shortly after moving from Oklahoma to Virginia, my husband began working with my father at my father’s newly opened wallpaper store.
While my husband spent much of his time at the store, I was mostly at home, pregnant with our second child, caring for my school-aged stepson & our infant daughter and working on developing my own special interest website & creating a new wallcovering website to become the face of our own soon-to-be wallpaper business.
When visiting the store one day, as I regularly did, a sales rep was demonstrating a special kind of faux finish wallpaper that he wanted my father to stock in his store. It was called PaperIllusion by Village.
When I saw how that wallcovering worked — how easy it was to apply, I was sold. I have never been much of a home decorator, but I did like doing paper crafts. And this unique kind of paper just spoke to me as potentially being a crafting material in addition to being a wallpaper for dummies (like me).
I don’t know how particularly impressed my father was with the product, but he agreed to stock it.
I soon learned this unique wallpaper had a cult-like following after its initial product launch on QVC. And when I saw how the product’s distributor, which was my dad’s supplier, was handling its own clunky discussion forum meant to service the product’s end users, I thought to myself, I could do better than that.
So, I set out to create my own niche website to market this particular product online, apart from my dad’s business. And I created a sister site to go with it, housing a better discussion forum plus a photo gallery to better support the product’s consumers.
Hence, Wallpaper Illusions and Paper It Fun! were born…in 2005. (I wish I had screen shots of the sister site in its heyday.)
My PaperIllusion-based endeavors grew into one of the most successful operations I’ve ever been a part of. It was my pride & joy. And it was such a joy because I genuinely loved this product, having used it in several rooms of my own home.
And I appreciated having my husband (and eventually my kids) working alongside me with so much of it.
Sadly, however, after the paper’s manufacturing changed hands and underwent a massive transformation, the patent-holder chose to cease its production in 2016.
Thankfully, there was still plenty of stock available to sell for quite a while. So, we were able to carry on with our business & Paper It Fun! community for several more years.
But then, our main supplier went out of business, and we knew our days were numbered.
We attempted to see about manufacturing the product ourselves to no avail. (My husband is still open to the prospect of having it manufactured ourselves.)
When our personal inventory dwindled and our business was no longer profitable, I shut the business down and removed the purchasing option from my website. That was in 2020.
As time passed, still having quite a bit of stock left on hand and knowing this paper was nowhere else to be found in the marketplace, I thought, surely there must be people out there who still need this — to at least make repairs to their previously done projects.
So, in early 2024, I updated my main website to reflect what I still have on hand and provided a way for interested parties to get in touch with me. And I’ve enjoyed periodically connecting with other PaperIllusion-lovers once again ever since.
The PaperIllusion Product’s Path (as best I can recall)
When I began selling PaperIllusion online, there were 21 patterns available, and we offered them all.
- Script: Pearl & Cream, Tuscan Red, Burnished Gold and Cobalt Blue
- Hearthstone: Cream & Bone, Multi, Fresco Green, Granite and Blush
- Travertine: French Vanilla, Carmel, Terra Cotta, Green & Red, Powder Room Pink and Red & Gold
- Florentine Marble: Earth and Stone
- Roman: Champagne, Blue and Green
- and Crepe: Bronze.
Then, two more Script colors were added: Harvest Gold and Green Apple.
Later, six Hearthstone Kids colors were added: Bubble Gum, Sunset, Ocean, Aquamarine, Sky Blue and Camouflage. And then two colors in a new Olympus Stone Illusion: Charcoal and Sunbaked. This resulted in 31 colors in total, all under the Village brand name.
I created and offered for sale The Paper Illusions Guide and an 8.5″ x 11″ spiral-bound sample book, as well as individual samples of every color. My husband filled & shipped the boxed orders. I handled all the online marketing, customer service and bookkeeping. And when our daughter came of age, she filled all of our sample orders.
Eventually, we added cut “mini-rolls” to our product offerings for those needing just a little bit more, and I created an e-course and developed & maintained a blog component to the Paper It Fun! website.
Then, the product’s manufacturing/distributorship switched hands (from F. Schumacher & Co in the USA, to Blue Mountain Wallcoverings in Canada). The original product branded as being “by Village” was discontinued in 2010. And the new version became known as being “by Imperial”.
Blue Mountain Wallcoverings carried forward all the same colors under the same pattern numbers, and for the most part the product remained the same. Personally, I thought the quality of the original version was superior. Nonetheless, the product was still phenomenal.
But then, the manufacturer decided to make a drastic change to the product & its packaging. (I can’t remember the year in which this happened.)
The look. feel & color of the new patterns were significantly different, and the length of the sheets were cut down, changing the roll size from 85 sq ft to 56 sq ft, conforming it to the industry’s double roll standard.
This transformation rolled out many of the same illusions and sort-of-close colors of those which were offered prior, and they gave them all new pattern names & numbers. They also added a new illusion called Birdseye Marble and several new colors to a few of the existing illusions.
- Under the Script Illusion:
- Pearl & Cream became Parchment.
- Tuscan Red became Pomegranite.
- Burnished Gold became Golden Slate.
- Cobalt Blue, Harvest Gold and Green Apple were dropped.
- Under Hearthstone:
- Cream & Bone became Pebble.
- Multi became Toffee Crunch.
- Fresco Green became Marsh Spruce.
- Granite became River Rock.
- Blush and all of the Kids colors were dropped.
- Under Travertine:
- French Vanilla sort of transitioned into Hazelnut Cream.
- Carmel sort of transitioned into Nutmeg.
- Terra Cotta became Potters Clay.
- Green & Red, Red & Gold and Powder Room Pink were dropped.
- Creme Caramel and Green Mist were added.
- Under Florentine Marble:
- Earth transitioned into Cinnamon
- Stone transitioned into Sandstone
- The Roman, Crepe and Olympus Stone illusions were dropped.
- The Birdseye Marble illusion was added:
- Mocha Glaze
- Wild Sage
- Ashwood
- Pearl Oyster
- Plum Haze
- Copper Glow
- Tortoise
- Midnight Gold
- Rose Blush
- Burnished Teal
While I never used the latest double roll version myself, I believe the product was still good because we never received any complaints about it. But clearly, PaperIllusion didn’t have the same feel (or look) as it once had…and it never flew off the shelf like the prior versions did. As a result, the double roll versions were discontinued, too.
I was sad to see that PaperIllusion age end. Thankfully, the paper is not totally gone yet. To see which of this product is still available from me, please visit WallpaperIllusions.com.
And to learn if I have enough of a particular pattern to suit your needs, please send an email to carrie-at-wiggleculture-dot-com identifying which pattern(s) you’re interested in and the number of square feet you need to cover with it. And I’ll get back to you as soon as I can with how I might be able to help.
Do you have a PaperIllusion story of your own? Please share it below. I’d love to hear about it!
[This page was last updated on 3/21/25.]