Decorating 101: Create an Inviting Table Display

Welcome friends to this month’s Pinterest Challenge! Cindy of County Road 407 has challenged us to create a summertime coffee table display and I have several decorating ideas to share with you this time…

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Now let’s check out our inspiration…

Love of blond woods

This monochromatic coffee table comes to us from Beth over at Home Stories A to Z. I love her soft pastels and blond wood style! I am really into all whites and monochromatic although you’d never know it to look at our red sofa, dark wood furniture and the dark blue Afghani rug my husband, Mr. Ethereal, brought back from the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

So, let’s break this display down this lovely monochromatic summertime display:

• Beth started with a tufted upholstered coffee table with a display shelf below
• a short bookstack with a magnifying glass
• a tray with handles to corral several items together, including:
• a creamy candle, a small confit jar holding a set of pink prayer beads, and finally a glass vase filled with flowering spring blooms

Underneath the table is a woven basket with a set of what looks like bells lying next to it.

Hubby and I were on vacation this past week and had driven up to see our son and grandson in South Dakota. While we were there, we went to Scheels Sporting Goods in Sioux Falls and I wandered upstairs to the home decor section (fancy that?!!) while Hubby had fun wandering around the fishing section (as we went to pick up a couple of realistic small fish with hooks for our son so we could have fun fishing).

We had already gone fishing once and planned on fishing again that coming Friday.

I was lamenting the fact that I’d miss a second Pinterest Challenge and wouldn’t get to finish my coffee table at home, to which I had been gathering some items to share with you.

However, while at Scheels, I found several tablescapes which worked for our challenge! I asked permission to photograph and share their displays on my blog, and I was allowed carte blanche. 🙂

Let’s check out this first table, above!

• a pair of candlesticks bring in the height of the vase and greenery from our inspiration piece
• dark prayer beads with unraveling tassels
• a stack of trays replace the bookstack while doubling the trays
• a sweet ceramic blue bird, an empty picture frame and a small faux boxwood ball complete the look

This display was set atop a lightly stained sofa table, which I loved for its simplicity. This display shows off the height and interest created from our inspiration piece.

Here is why I didn’t share the whole sofa table at first:

It’s a hot mess with colorful candlesticks and other vases all jumbled up. 😉

The ladies did tell me they were in the middle of changing things up in their displays as much had sold over the previous weekend.

I do like the crossed support-bars underneath the table which could hold a large basket filled with light-weight items for further display.

Our second display

Here is where a monochromatic look really works in tones of deeper beiges and browns!

This sofa table with its blond and darker woods is perfect with its symmetrical sets of earthy, chunky vases set on either side of a wood bowl filled with textured carved wooden balls and a blond set of wooden prayer beads. Scheels has many sets of prayer beads if you are looking for some!

I like that the display related to the farm scene in the print above, too. Really love this one!!!

Our final summertime table display

This was my least favorite of the three displays; however, I am including it because I want to pick apart why it doesn’t work . This will help us figure out how to fix our own vignettes:

• Most of the items on the table are of the same height ~ It’s important to create displays with varying heights to keep visual interest.
• The prayer beads in this vignette don’t work with the chunky woven chain. It seems that the two items are fighting each other ~ I think one or the other should be left off of this tablescape, and frankly, I’d lose the beads and leave the chain.

If you are going for a beach-y naval theme, using the woven chain gives much more of a nautical feel than the prayer beads do.

• The grasses needed a taller vase ~ I like the grasses as they relate to the beach scene in the print up on the wall. They just need more height.

And that’s my take on why this display doesn’t work for me. You may find that you like it and that’s okay.

Finally, my summertime coffee table

I came home inspired to work on my coffee table and this (above) is my first iteration… Too spread out and all the weight is out on four corners. Naaaaa…

NOT WORKING… lol! 😉

My coffee table’s second iteration: BETTER!

It’s not perfect (yet), but I like the two book stacks raising the monkey pod bowl filled with shells and the other stack raising the flowers. I went for the height weighted on the right side of this display, and two light sources with the lantern and candle.

The blues of the prayer beads and the books speak to visits to the ocean as does the bath-salts package with its little girl and dog down on the shore. The book stacks look a bit heavy but I don’t have access to our stash of flowers at the moment in order to make a taller flower display. Otherwise, I would have done that.

They are stuck up in the rafters right now and only Mr. Ethereal can get them down.

Nevertheless, I am pretty happy with how this coffee table turned out and I have certainly used the lessons learned from visiting Scheel’s diplays in this coffee table. 🙂

That’s a wrap!

So, here are “my” summertime table displays and how you can use these decorating ideas shared above as a guideline to help you put together tabletop vignettes in your home and create something really special to share!

Up next, we visit Diane over at South House Design and I know she has created a wonderful summertime coffee table which is really special! You’ll find all of our talented designers’ ideas linked below.

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Happy decorating, dear friends,