HEAVENS TO ETSY: TOILUXE

In totally serious attempts to remain the mature adult-types we often pretend to be, let’s be honest: Sometimes people sit on the toilet for a while. Like, roughly the time it takes to mentally type up your significant other’s hypothetical future eulogy about how fucking excellent a human being you were.

And if you’re half as excellent a human being as I am, that’s gonna take a while.

But instead of wondering which blown-up, smiley picture they’ll frame the flowers with, why not fix your thoughts on something a little, let’s say, lighter. Perhaps Alice Cooper and guillotines, for instance. Or Chuck Norris wrestling the guts out of a double-headed alligator. Or Bettie Page being … Bettie Page.

Stephanie Ziobro is here to help decorate your temple with the most bizarre and quirky of your toilet-seat desires.

The 38-year-old Medford resident almost literally takes one man’s (or woman’s) shit and makes it shine.

Visit Ziobro’s Etsy shop Toiluxe and let your eyes graze on a bountiful buffet of decoupage toilet-seat covers and light-switch plates, ranging from renowned works of art such as the Mona Lisa and American Gothic, to pop-culture icons like Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans and the King of Rock and Roll himself. Some exquisitely decadent, some flat-out funny. All kitschy.

And if you’d rather not see Farrah Faucet (get it?) or Betty White and her Golden gang each time you enter the lavatory, fret not. Ziobro specializes in custom, made-to-order accessories. Nothing’s too outrageous, nothing’s out of reach.

“The first custom seat I did—

she wanted a ‘portly old timey nude surrounded by cats and cupcakes.’

I was actually really happy with how that came out,” said Ziobro. “Knowing I can do that, I got a little less intimidated. I was ready to do it again.” Not intimidated is damn right. Ziobro’s first seat she made for her own commode was The Last Supper.

But why use toilet seats as a canvas of choice, I wondered after I first visited Toiluxe (Tagline: “Your neighbors don’t have this.”), half expecting some outlandish, Freudian explanation for her porcelain-throne thirst.

“I got really into decoupage and wanted to decoupage everything—tables, lighters, whatever I could. One day I was like I don’t know what to decoupage and there was my toilet seat so I tried that.”

“It’s white, it’s wooden, it’s plain, it’s there.”

At first she crafted a couple for friends, and after positive feedback and encouragement, Ziobro put some online just to see what would happen. When people actually started buying and requesting these toilet seat works of art, she knew she must have hit a niche.

The toilet seats must be wooden, she explained, for the images, which she finds everywhere from books to tag sales to the Internet, to adhere properly, and so they’ll be durable and long lasting. Along with some hand-painting and embellishments, each seat is cured with an acrylic sealer to prevent water (and … other) damage, and so they can be sanitized with any usual bathroom cleaner. The first seat she created lasted three years.

On her Etsy profile, Ziobro has written “I live breathe and dream toilet seats. If I could eat toilet seats, I would probably as least consider it.”

I had to know.

“I think it would be very tough on the teeth. As far as taste … if I could, I don’t think the taste would bother me.

It’s not like eating a bug or anything.”