Staging a Shelf

 I don’t know about everyone else,  but I use to really  struggle  decorating shelves, above kitchen cabinets and shelves.  Then I realized what was wrong.  I HATE clutter.  I really  struggled with the idea off putting up a bunch of knickknacks trying to fill a space.  But on the flip side,  not putting anything up defeated the point of the shelf.

So,  I am going to show you how I found my happy medium.  Let’s  get started.  Here is  my beautiful  blank canvas/shelf.    It’s beautiful,  but boring.

When  staging I  usually  find  3 or 5 different  types of items. As a general  rule in art,   I  typically try to  work in odd numbers.  The theory  behind it is,  in nature most everything is done in odd numbers.

In this case I chose:

• Vases
• Candles
• Potted Greens
• Paper Mache’ Boxes
• Decorative Balls

 ( The items are normally  dictated by what I have lying around, and whatever items I can find that is cheap.)

Paper Mache Boxes:  Cheap and available at most craft stores.

 I tend to start  by  staging my  largest  items  first,  this way  I can easily  distribute the visual weight.  For my largest item  I used paper mache boxes. I  just liked them,  they were cheap.

Potted Greens:  I  got the tins from  Ikea for less than a buck a piece, and the greens you can usually get wherever floral stems  are sold.

  I used these as my largest “color”.  Again, I  had three, and wanted the color to be distributed evenly.

I knew I wanted  the color to be visible and  not hiding behind other  items.  I made sure they were on top of, or in front of the larger pieces.

Glass Vases:  I picked up most of these at thrift  stores.  You can get them super cheap and in a variety of shapes and sizes.   Some of them I dressed up a bit with  jute/twine and muslin.

Once my large  items, and pop colors were in place,  I brought in a neutral.  I had  quite a few glass vases ,  so I used them as “filler” .   They weren’t  my  focal point,  so they are a good neutral to fill in the gaps.

Candles:  I picked up most of these candles at the Dollar Store!

Although the candles are white,  they  will  still  be a contrast to the other items.  Whenever  you bring in a contrasting color,  make sure to  space them out.  To  test  this,  I  just stand back and  make my  eyes go blurry and see if anything  sticks out like a sore thumb.

Can you  see that the white is evenly distributed ?

 Twine Balls:  Styrofoam ball + twine+ hot glue gun=  Cheap ,  beautiful visual texture.

They are  essentially   just  fillers.  I ended up putting most of them in the vases.

Moss Balls: Moss sheets+ Styrofoam ball+Hot glue gun=  Perfect  finishing touch.

Again, with  the moss,  I  made sure that they were spread out. Even though they are small,  they are my  pop color.  I also  had to consider where  my  other “colors” are, and place them accordingly.

In summary   When staging I  rely  on repetitiveness in order to create a cohesive look.  I work with one type of item at a time.  Lastly,  don’t over do it. Find one or two colors and then  use a lot of neutrals.   It is surprising  how far a little color can go.

So that is it.  Go and do my friends!

 Take Luck,

Corey