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Expanded stickers

If you cross a sheet of expanded steel with a decorative sticker, what do you get?
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Expanded metal is made by taking a roll of sheet metal, cutting thin slits in the sheet, and then using rollers to stretch the metal so the slits open, forming a mesh. The same process is also used to create plastic mesh.

This idea is fairly simple: Start with a sheet of colored or patterned plastic or paper, with adhesive backing and waxed paper liner, and cut a similar pattern of slits into the sticker, being careful not to cut through the backing.

Sell it to the customer in this form, and, as he peels the sticker off the back, it turns into an open mesh.

Possible Uses:

The resulting mesh will have an appearance similar to expanded metal, which means it would be useful for making signage advertising... expanded metal ;)

Putting ordinary stickers on a curved surface (other than a tube or cone) will usually result in wrinkled or torn stickers... expanded stickers could be much more flexible and conforming.

Obviously, you can cover a larger surface area with expanded stickers than plain ones.

There're probably other benefits, and perhaps some downsides, but it's late and I'm too tired to think of more.

goldbb, Oct 04 2016

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       Downside: when the sticker expands, the individual bits will twist sideways so the adhesive won't be in one plane. You can smash it down, but that will result in small tears and/or lumps, depending on the material. It could still be useful for something...
scad mientist, Oct 05 2016
  

       well, you could make really huge wind resistant advertising, the thing is that expanded metal looks kind of unaesthetic, from my perspective.
beanangel, Oct 05 2016
  
      
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